‘Gun� ght’ kills 2, another body found n Tribune Report

Two more suspected criminals were killed in a “gun� ght” with law en-forcers in the capital yesterday, while the body of another was recovered inSirajganj.

In the � rst incident yesterday eve-ning, two suspected robbers were killed in a “shootout” between police and members of the robber gang in the captial’s Jatrabari area.

Elias Sharif, deputy commissioner of Wari police, claimed that Salahud-din, 28, and his cohort Jewel, 27, were members of a local gang of robbers that operated in the Kolapotti area.

The incident took place within hours after the National Human Rights Commission chief called for stopping all sorts of extrajudicial killings.

Police said Salahuddin was wanted

in eight cases, including four under-tri-al murders. Recently, he was freed on bail in one of those cases.

Police also claimed that the two were arrested from the locality around 11am yesterday and brought to the Jatrabari police station. In custody, they admitted carrying illegal arms. Around 5:30pm, law enforcers took

the two on a drive to recover more arms, when seven-eight of their fellow “robbers” attacked police with � rearms in the Sutikhalpar area, resulting in a gun� ght.

The two robbers, who sustained in-juries in the gun� ght, were declared dead after being taken to a local hospi-tal. Their bodies were sent to the Mit-ford hospital for autopsy, police said.

Earlier yesterday in Sirajganj, the body of a suspected criminal, wanted in a murder case, was recovered, police said.

Jahangir Alam, 45, was wanted for the killing of local Awami League leader Saiful Islam, who was allegedly hacked to death in December 30.

Local residents found Jahangir’s dead body near the Dhaka-Sirajganj-Ra-jshahi highway in the morning and in-formed police, said Abdul Based, SI of Kamarkhand police station.

The body had two injury marks on the head, the SI said. RAB and Police claimed that they did not have any in-formation about the death.

Rozina Khatun, wife of the de-ceased, alleged that plainclothes po-licemen nabbed her husband and one Joban Ali from Dhaka on January 19.

PAGE 2 COLUMN 5

Bangladesh inal-Qaeda’scross-hairs?Home ministry terms an al-Queda audio baseless, DB not sure until the terrorist out� t denies responsibility n Julfi kar Ali Manik

An audio clip available on a website “Jihadology” became a much-talked-about issue in the country yesterday as it claims that the audio message was from terrorist organisation al-Qaeda’s leader Ayman al-Zawahiri with a call to Bangladeshi Muslims to � ght against secularists and “atheists.”

Private television channels through-out the day broadcast news based on the audio clip that claimed “As-Sahāb Media presents a new video [though it was only voice] message from al-Qā’idah’s Dr Ayman al-Zawāhirī: ‘Bang-ladesh: A Massacre Behind a Wall of Silence.’”

The Dhaka Tribune enquired a number of sources to verify the authenticity of the audio clip, but could not con� rm it. Meanwhile, the home ministry termed the audio message baseless as per their intelligence information.

Monirul Islam, joint commissioner of the Detective Branch of Dhaka Met-ropolitan Police, who listened to the audio tape, said: “Primarily it seems that it was a message from al-Qaeda and Zawahiri.

“Until and unless al-Qaeda o� cial-ly denies their responsibility over this audio message, we will have reasons to believe that they published it,” Monirul told the Dhaka Tribune over phone.

Though authenticity of the audio tape remained uncon� rmed, this type of mes-sage raised concerns among the cross

section of people as there was apprehen-sion of further rise of Islamist militancy, radicalisation and terror activities.

According to the claim, Zawahiri’s audio voice came with footages of He-fazat-e-Islam’s violent rallies in Dhaka last year. The audio message was in Ar-abic and there was sub-title in English over the footages.

However, Kamal Ahmed, additional secretary (political wing) of home min-istry, told the Dhaka Tribune: “We de-pend on our intelligence wing for any issue related to our internal security. According to our intelligence wing of-� cials, the media report on al-Qaeda’s audio message is totally baseless, as they are yet to � nd any source to con-� rm the news.”

According to the subtitles, Zawahi-ri was saying, “Thousands are being killed in the streets of Bangladesh... they have come out to protest the col-lusion of the anti-Islamic secular gov-ernment with a bunch of transgressing secularists who are heaping insults and vulgar abuses on Islam and the Prophet of Islam, may peace be upon him”

He said hundreds of religious schol-ars were also facing “hardships, man-hunt, imprisonment, trials, death sen-tences and life imprisonment without any guilt, except that they have taken a stand against the agents of this Crusade onslaught, who are being used as tools by the leading criminals of the western world to distort the image of Islam and poke fun at this religion, its Prophet, and beliefs.”

Zawahiri, the top leader of al-Qaeda, says: “My Muslim brothers in Bangla-desh, I invite you to confront this Cru-sade onslaught against Islam, which is being orchestrated by the leading criminals in the subcontinent and the West against Islam, the prophet of Is-lam, and the Islamic creed, so that they

PAGE 2 COLUMN 1

Sheikh Jamal defeated in Kolkata tie-breakern Shishir Hoque

A bizarre red card shown to Sheikh Jamal Dhanmondi Club’s Haitian forward Sony Norde appeared as the turning point in the � nal of the 118th IFA Shield � nal as the Bangladesh side despite dominating lost to Kolkata Mohammedan Sporting 3-4 in tie-breakers at the Yuba Bharati Krirangan, formerly known as Salt Lake Stadium, yesterday.

After 120 minutes of endless end-to-end football could not see a winner, the breathtaking � nal went to the penalties with both side locked at 1-1.

It took Mohammedan’s substitute goalkeeper Naseem Akter, who came on in the 118th minute, to produce two brilliant saves against Linkonand Didar to rob the luck from the Jamals and hand the Kolkata Blackand Whites the title of the fourth oldest club cup competition after 43 long years.

Backed by thousands of supporters

the hosts attacked right from the opening whistle which however did not puzzle the visitors who matched with equal brilliance.

The much talked about footballer in the tournament Norde opened the scoring in the 28th minute with a glorious free-kick before Mehrajuddin Wadoo cancelled out the lead at the stroke of the � rst-half mark.

The Bangladesh Premier League giants dominated and enjoyed ball possession throughout the game before the momentum was literally robbed from them with the dismissal of Norde. Mohammedan’s Brazilian defender Luciano Sabrosa was closely guarding Norde in the 82nd minute when suddenly he fell down with hands on his faces prompting the referee to call it a foul.

Referee Santosh Kumar without any further consultancy with his linesmen showed the red card to the Haitian which saw the Jamal players burst

PAGE 2 COLUMN 5

20 pages | Price: Tk10

Falgun 4, 1420Rabius Saani 15, 1435Regd. No. DA 6238Vol 1 No 324 SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 16, 2014 | www.dhakatribune.com | SECOND EDITION

NHRC BOSS REACTSP2

News3 The aspiring candidates of third- and fourth-phase upazila parishad polls would not be able to change their voter areas before the upcoming election, the Election Commission o� cials said yesterday.

Op-Ed11 One of the more profound laments of an-guish I heard from a South Asian expatriate was the pithy observation that ‘how can we

move forward when our language, perhaps uniquely of all, uses the same colloquial word for ‘yesterday’ and ‘tomorrow’?’

Entertainment12 As part of Shadhona’s 3 year project Dhrumel, Shadhona and Manipuri Theatre will stage the premier show of their new dance drama Premamritam at the audito-rium of Dance and Music Department of Bangladesh Shilpakala Academy.

INSIDE

9 | NORTH KOREA UNDER UN SCANNER6 | NATIONAL ROBOTICS FESTIVAL 2014 13 | YOUNG TIGERS OPEN WC ACCOUNT7 | GOOD TIME FOR ACCOUNTANTS

‘My Muslim brothers in Bangladesh, I invite you to confront this Crusade onslaught against Islam’

Contaminated water from a local sugar mill spreads across farmlands, with farmers desperately trying to save their crops from being polluted BANGLAR CHOKH

Decomposed bodies of 3 newborns recovered n Tribune Report

Police recovered the decomposed bod-ies of three newborn children from two separate places in the capital’s Moham-madpur area yesterday.

The unidenti� ed bodies of the new-borns, aged only around a couple of days, were found in a roadside dustbin and a drain at Nobodaya Housing and Aziz Mahalla areas respectively.

Nayan Mia and Jahangir, sub-in-spectors of Mohammadpur police sta-tion, recovered the bodies and sent those to Dhaka Medical College morgue for autopsy.

“Locals informed us after noticing the bodies in the dustbin at Nobodaya housing. We suspect that the babies were born two or three days back,” said Nayan.

Police said the bodies could have been dumped by clinics or hospitals, but suspected that the infants were not connected by birth.

PAGE 2 COLUMN 4

WHEN PROFIT COMES BEFORE THE ENVIRONMENT

‘Jihadology’hosted in USn Julfi kar Ali Manik

The website named “Jihadology” that posted an audio tape of al-Qaeda lead-er Ayman al-Zawahiri on Bangladesh is hosted at a domain located in the US.

An IT expert after a quick look at the technical information of the website said “Jihadology” had been created on August 16, 2010, but came into opera-tion in September the same year.

According to the website, the audio clip (having footages of still photos) was taken from “al� daa.info,” which is hosted in Kuala Lumpur.

The “Jihadology” website at the top of the page said the video message ti-tled “Bangladesh: A Massacre behind a Wall of Silence” was presented by “As-Sahab Media.”

PAGE 2 COLUMN 1

News2 DHAKA TRIBUNE Sunday, February 16, 2014

AL men torch 13 houses of party men n Our Correspondent, Mymensingh

A group of people, allegedly supporters of ruling Awami League, torched some 13 houses of their party rivals at the Swalpo Paschimpara village in Gouri-pur upazila in Mymensingh last night.

Police said the attack could be a retaliation to another attack on local Awami League supporter Shahed Ali, who was injured by unknown miscre-ants on Friday night.

Shahed had a longstanding dispute with one Mustakim Member, also an Awami League supporter, over estab-lishing supremacy in the area. Police said Shahed’s supporters blamed Mustakim and his men for the attack, said police.

Following the attack on Shahed, his sons Swapon and Nayan, along with their men, attacked and ransacked the houses of Mustakim Member and his relatives around 9pm yesterday. At one stage, they set the 13 houses on � re, said Hamidur Rahman, OC of Gouripur police station. l

BNP to write to EC today on upazila polls n Mohammad Al-Masum Molla

The BNP is in doubt whether the up-coming upazila polls will be free and fair as the party alleging that the ruling party men are violating the electoral code of conduct and the opposition leaders and activists were harassed.

The party will send a letter to the election commission mentioning the harassment of the opposition men, obstruct in the campaigning and the in� uence on the administration by the ruling party men and also urging the commission to take immediate and necessary steps, said a party insider.

BNP leader alleged the ruling party have been hatching conspiracy to keep low voter turnout in the polls because if turn out is huge then the majority votes will go in favor of the BNP’s bag.

“Look at the � eld and know wheth-er the voters would vote freely. BNP leaders and activists were arresting ev-eryday. How a fair poll will take place,” Goyeshwar Chandra Roy, a standing

committee member of the party, told the Dhaka Tribune.

In many places, the BNP backed candidates alleged that they have been facing troubles in campaigning as cases were � led against many of their activ-ists and law enforcers hunting them everyday disrupted their smooth cam-paigning.

On Friday, some leaders and activ-ists of Bangladesh Chhatra League, stu-dents’ wing of the ruling AL, attacked a microbus of Gouranadi upazila chair-man candidate Abul Hossain Mia, a BNP-backed aspirant.

In Sailakupa upazila of Jhenaidhah, the BNP-backed chairman candidate Rakibul Hasan in an alleged attack by the Awami League men on Wednesday.

Rakibul said, “All my activists are ei-ther on the run or in jail. How can I will campaign to woo voters.”

On Saturday, some of Bangladesh Chhatra League leaders and activists with a motorcycle � eet also ransacked and torched election camps of BNP

rebel candidate and district (north) BNP vice president Lokman Hossain Khan at Mahilara, Diasur areas.

Abul Kalam Azad, Gournadi police station in charge, said they yet not re-ceived any allegation of attacking elec-tion camp of BNP leader Lokman Hos-sain and already arrested BCL activist Firoz Sardar as an accused for attacking Journalist Monir.

Our Barisal correspondent said more than 64 percent of total 139 vote centers in Gournadi and Bakerganj upazilas of Barisal district marked as vulnerable.

Md. Dulal Talukdar, district election o� cer and returning o� cers of the elections said elections in these two upazilas scheduled to be held on Feb-ruary 19.

However Barisal district election o� ce and police superintendent o� ce said they marked 89 out of 139 vote centers in those two upazilas as vul-nerable. Out of those 89 vulnerable vote centers, 55 marked as highly risk-prone, EC and police sources said.

All of 45 vote centers Gournadi up-azila marked as vulnerable including 28 as risk-prone and 17 as highly risk-prone. In Bakerganj upazila 50 out of 94 centers were marked as normal, 6 as vulnerable and 38 as highly risk-prone, the EC and police sources told.

Considering infrastructural condi-tions of the vote centers, communica-tion facilities, geographical, political and law and order situation, those cen-ters were marked as risk-prone accord-ing to the con� dential reports of law enforcing agencies, police sources said.

Special security arrangements in-cluding deploying of increasing number of forces, striking forces, mobile teams, raids to arrest miscreants and terror-ists would be taken to conduct free fair peaceful polls in risk-prone vote centers as like as normal centers, district police superintendent AKM Ehsan Ullah told.

Returning o� cer said list of vulner-able vote centers already sent to con-cerned upazila nirbahi o� cers for tak-ing necessary actions. l

Dhaka seeks Hasina-Manmohan meetingn Sheikh Shahariar Zaman

Bangladesh has sought time from In-dia for a meeting between Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina and her Indian counterpart Manmohan Singh on the sidelines of the Bimstec summit in Myanmar next month.

The third Bimstec summit, attended by heads of states or governments of the member countries, will be held on March 4 in Myanmar capital Naypyidaw.

“We also sought sideline meetings with the heads of participating states and governments,” Foreign Secretary Md Shahidul Haque said.

Indian High Commissioner Pan-kaj Saran told the Dhaka Tribune that there were de� nite chances that the two prime ministers might meet.

A senior foreign ministry o� cial said Bhutan had sought schedule for a sideline meeting with Bangladesh and Dhaka had con� rmed it.

“The schedule of all sideline meet-

ings will be decided after the Bangladesh delegation reach Naypyidaw,” he said.

The � ight schedules and other ar-rangements of the Bangladesh prime minister was yet to be � xed.

About Hasina-Manmohan meet-ing, he said in all previous multilateral programmes including the UN General Assembly the two leaders held sideline meetings.

The Bay of Bengal Initiative for Multi-Sectoral Technical and Econom-ic Cooperation (Bimstec) was formed in Bangkok in 1997 and had its � rst sum-mit in 2004 in Bangkok and the second one in New Delhi in 2008. It has 14 sec-tors and Bangladesh is the lead coun-try in trade, investment and climate change issues.

At the summit, the countries are likely to sign several deals including setting up the Bimstec Secretariat in Dhaka and also a Weather and Climate Centre in New Delhi, said another dip-lomat. l

Bangladesh in al-Qaeda’s cross-hairs? PAGE 1 COLUMN 2may turn you into slaves of a despotic and disbelieving system.”

Though some parts of the message gives an idea that he was talking about the Jamaat-e-Islami leaders who are in jail and facing war crimes charges while some of them have already been awarded death sentence, he did not mention speci� cally about them.

Similarly, the audio gives a sense that the al-Qaeda leader was talking about the propaganda of killing thou-sands of people after Hefazat’s May 5 rally at Motijheel. But Hefazat’s name was not mentioned speci� cally in the audio message.

Qawmi madrasa-based Hefazat in a statement yesterday said they and the Islamic scholars had no relation with the audio message.

Egyptian physician Zawahiri, born in 1951, is the leader of al-Qaeda. In 1993, al-Zawahiri travelled to the US, where he addressed several California mosques under his Abdul Mu’iz pseudonym.

The audio message said: “O’ schol-ars of Islam in Bangladesh! You must � ght an ideological and propagational war against the secularists and atheists to expose the shallowness of their be-liefs and ideas.

“You must highlight in front of the masses their failures, scandals, and the blind alley they are leading this country into. At the same time, you must also elucidate the merits of the Shariah. You must shed light on the justice, freedom, glory, honour, chas-tity, and protection of ethics, values and human dignity which the Shariahcalls for.”

Claiming that a massacre of Muslims was being carried out these days, and the Muslim world was totally oblivious to it, the message says: “The western media is colluding with the killers to belittle its signi� cance and hide the facts. This is the bloodbath taking place in Bangladesh, without the Muslims paying the least attention to it.

“Bangladesh is the victim of the

conspiracy in which the agents of In-dia, the corrupt leadership of Pakistan Army, and treacherous power-hungry politicians of Bangladesh and Pakistan, who are always prepared to sacri� ce everything for the sake of ful� lling their ambitions and desires, were all equal participants.”

But, the real victim was the Muslim Ummah in the subcontinent generally, claims the video.

It further says:”The crimes that are being committed in Bangladesh today against the core beliefs of Islam, the Prophet of Islam (peace be upon him), and the Muslim Ummah are the only fruits of the rotten seeds sown by these criminals.

“Their purpose was not achieving independence from Pakistan, stopping the aggression against the people of Bangladesh, or getting rid of military rule in Pakistan. None of this was the real objective, even if these criminals took cover behind these slogans, par-roted these lines and propagated this

out of their malevolence or stupidity, or due to both.”

Claiming that independence of Bangladesh was a conspiracy of India and the Pakistan Army, Zawahiri says: “The real purpose was weakening the Muslim Ummah in the subcontinent. It was to rip the Ummah into pieces, and bleed it to death by getting it entan-gled in mutual strife, regional con� ictsand wars.

“What is taking place today in Pa-kistan, Bangladesh, India and Afghan-istan is only a prelude to the execution of this evil plan, and the aforemen-tioned criminals are the tools of the enemies of Islam in this vile conspira-cy. Those who massacred the Muslims in Bangladesh only yesterday are the same people who are massacring the Muslims in Pakistan today.

“Bangladesh which they claimed to have won from Pakistan so that it may get its freedom is being turned into a subjugated surrogate of India,” says the message. l

Sheikh Jamal defeated in Kolkata PAGE 1 COLUMN 3into anger. Replays clearly indicated they had every right to oppose the de-cision as it was a clear play-acting from the Mohammedan defender who was untouched by Norde.

The drama was yet to begin as San-tosh also cautioned Luciano not once, but twice during the brawl of the Jamal and Mohammedan players resulting in a send-o� to the Brazilian as well.

Sheikh Jamal dominated from their very � rst attack and emphasised on ae-rial crosses from the wings. They could have taken the lead on � ve minutes as Wedson skipped past two defenders to break into the penalty area, but his cut back de� ected o� a defender on to the keeper.

A silly foul on Norde gifted Jamal a free-kick from 25 yards and he did what he does best to give his side the lead. The Haitian forward curled the free-kick that sneaked in from the top left corner. Josimar outmuscled his marker seconds before the breather to � nd Wa-doo unmarked who slotted home the

equaliser. Sohel Rana almost retained the lead

four minutes into the second-half but the mid� elder � red wide before Norde saw his scorching shot from 25-yards grasped by Mohammedan goalkeeper Luis Barreto in the 63rd minute.

With two red cards and each side down to 10-man the game opened more in the last few minutes with Ja-mal continuing to mount pressure.

In the 115th minute substitute Alli Amisu almost scored for the visitors but Barreto was once again up to his task producing an excellent � st away on his angular shot.

Jamal coach Joseph Afusi earlier brought in goalkeeper Ziaur Rahman to replace Hemel. He also made another tactical change bringing in Alli Amisu for Emeka. Alli, however, frustrat-ed Afusi by missing to convert in the tie-breaker.

Wedson, Nasir and Yasin managed to convert from the spot for Jamal while Khanthang Paite, Manish, Nirmal and Mehraj scored for Mohammedan. l

Environmentalists: Rooppur plant lacks proper assessment n Abu Bakar Siddique

Conservationists have expressed con-cerns over the establishment of Roop-pur Nuclear Power Plant as it was taken without conducting proper assessment of risk management.

At a discussion yesterday, they also urged the government to take proper precautions to avoid environmental and health hazards since it was the � rst of its kind in Bangladesh.

Bangladesh Poribesh Andolon (Bapa) organised the discussion at Dha-ka Reporters’ Unity.

Former chief engineer of Bangla-desh Atomic Energy Commission Dr Abdul Matin said the government had taken the project in a hurried manner.

He stressed proper waste man-agement mechanism since nuclear wastage is extremely detrimental to environment and human health. “In addition, the government has to prepare

e� cient manpower who will deal with the process. It should not depend on the foreign experts.”

The government has planned to es-tablish the Rooppur project with a pow-er generation capacity of 2,000MW.

On April 2 last year, the Executive Committee of the National Econom-ic Council (Ecnec) approved the � rst phase of the 2,000MW project at a cost of Tk5,242 crore. In January last year, Bangladesh and Russia signed a $500m

loan agreement to cover the costs of feasibility study, plant design, infra-structure development and training of the plant’s personnel.

Prof M Firoz Ahmed, vice-chancel-lor of Stamford University Bangladesh, said: “The government should follow the recommendations and guidelines of the International Atomic Energy Commission properly to avoid any kind of accident.”

He demanded that all the agree-

ments and contracts be made public. Regarding the risks, former director

of International Atomic Energy Com-mission Dr Jasimuddin Ahmed said the country would experience massive di-saster if any kind of accident occurred at the plant. The people living within 30km radius would be a� ected.

Citing the example of Fukushima Nuclear Plant in Japan, he said the site of Rooppur plant was also vulnerable to earthquakes. l

UK parliament condemns attacks on minoritiesn UNB

The British Parliament has condemned the “calculated and indiscriminate” attacks on religious minorities in Bangladesh in the aftermath of January 5 election.

The House, however, noted with appreciation the response of the Ban-gladesh government to the violence, particularly the visit of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina to the a� ected areas and her assurance of compensation, reha-bilitation and security for the victims.

In a motion tabled on February 12,

the British parliament called on all po-litical parties, both in government and opposition, to ensure that such attacks did not repeat in the future, according to the UK parliament website.

The motion underscored the bid for all stakeholders to uphold the tradition of communal harmony that has been a hallmark of the people of Bangladesh.

It said the House was particularly disturbed by the repetition of such in-cidents that took place after the gener-al election in 2001, the perpetrators of which were not brought to justice. l

Police fail to arrest rogue student leadersn Our Correspondent, Sylhet

The law enforcers have failed to arrest the rogue student leaders of Madan Mohan College in Sylhet in their � rst drive, launched upon directives of Fi-nance Minister AMA Muhith on Friday.

A team of Sylhet Kotwali police on Friday night conducted the drive in Dokkin Surma area to arrest Arun Deb-nath Sagar, president of the college unit Bangladesh Chhatra League, who has been charged for vandalising the principal’s room on January 26.

But the police did not � nd the ac-cused at his home.

A case was � led against Sagar and 15 others centring the incident. It is alleged that the accused had collected around Tk70 lakh through admission business, and attacked the principal’s room as they failed to continue the extortion.

Muhith is the president of the col-lege’s management committee. l

Police recover pistols, pipe guns, bullets and several machetes in an overnight raid at Dhaka College in the capital on Thursday night. The photo was taken at New Market police station yesterday FOCUS BANGLA

‘Gun� ght’ kills 2, another body found PAGE 1 COLUMN 5The dead body of Joban Ali, the prime accused in the murder case, was found on February 5, but her husband had been missing.

On February 10, an activist of Jubo League, youth front of ruling Awami League, was killed in an alleged “gun� ght” with RAB in the Chawk Bazar area in the Barisal city.

RAB claimed that Faruk Ahmedalias Panama Faruk was killed when a group of young men opened � re on them and they retaliated with gunshots.

Last year, Ain O Salish Kendra (ASK), a Dhaka-based rights body, said in a monitoring report that at least 208

people were killed by law enforcement agencies.

ASK observed that despite assurances from the government, state actors had been involved in killings in the name of cross� re, gun� ghts and encounters.

The rights watchdog also expressed concerns about the rising number of deaths in police custody.

On January 21, State Minister for Home A� airs Asaduzzaman Khan Kamal said the joint forces – comprising mainly Police, RAB and BGB members – were engaged in an operation against “terrorists” and “criminals” and that none of those involved in violence and crime would be spared. l

Decomposed bodies of 3 newborns PAGE 1 COLUMN 1“We do not think they were twins and the parents dumped them together,” SI Nayan said. The infants had no injury marks.

The infant recovered from the Aziz Mahalla drain had no injury marks and was also dumped soon after his birth, said SI Jahangir.

“We are trying to � nd out whether the infants were born dead or if they died after being dumped,” he said.

As of � ling this report at 8:45pm, no case has been � led in thisconnection. l

NHRC: Stop extrajudicial killings n Tribune Report

The National Human Rights Commis-sion has called upon authorities con-cerned to immediately stop extraju-dicial killings going on in the name of “shootout” and “cross� re.”

“There should be no extrajudicial killing whatever the reasons may be. It should be stopped immediately,” NHRC Chairman Prof Mizanur Rahman said yesterday at a programme in the capital.

He made the statement at a time when two suspected criminals were killed in a “gun� ght” with police in the capital’s Jatrabari area yesterday.

“We started raising our voice against all sorts of extrajudicial killings after taking over [NHRC o� ce] in 2010,” he said claiming that such incidents had come down to almost “zero percent.”

Mizanur, a professor of law at Dha-ka University, also said: “People today hear and read about cooked up stories of gun� ght.

“The stories are all similar. Only the names of victims, places of occurrenc-es, times, dates and the names of the o� cials involved are di� erent,” he said.

These incidents indicate deteriora-tion of human rights situation in the country, he said. l

Jihadology PAGE 1 COLUMN 3It was di� cult to determine the o� cial website of “As-Sahab Media.”

But according to another website named “Global Jihad,” the As-Sahab Foundation for Islamic Media Pub-lication (The Clouds) is the media production house of the al-Qaeda. It distributes the organisation’s point of views for promoting the Global Jihad, encouraging young Muslims to identify themselves with the cause and glorify-ing the al-Qaeda.

It says the As-Sahab started in 2001 under Abdul Rehman al-Maghrebi, the son-in-law of Zawahiri, and with the involvement of Adam Yahiye Gadahn and Attiya Allah.

Since then, As-Sahab distributed through Arab TV networks including Aljazeera or Al-Arabia or local Pakistani TV stations the footages and audios of primarily Zawahiri, much less of Osa-ma Bin Laden, and footages of success-ful attacks in Iraq, Afghanistan, Paki-stan and all over the world.

The “Global Jihad” website is hosted in Germany. l

3NewsDHAKA TRIBUNE Sunday, February 16, 2014

‘Trustworthiness of political leadership dips’PPRC launches report on good governance trend and perceptionn Muhammad Zahidul Islam

More than three-fourths people think that trustworthiness of po-litical leadership has deteriorated while only 5.6% people sees im-provement, says a new survey re-port prepared by Power and Partic-ipation Research Centre (PPRC), a think tank.

However, Democracy Interna-tional in a USAID-funded opinion poll recently said parliament is the most popular institution in the country when 83% people strong-ly like it as a political institution. While three major political parties enjoy support of 69%.

The DI opinion poll results, re-leased this month, says 32% people like the Awami League, 31% like the BNP while 6% like Jatiya Party (Er-shad).

The PPRC launched the report of its � rst series “Bangladesh 2013: Governance Trends and Perception” yesterday at the Bilia auditorium in the capital. Rehman Sobhan, chair-man of Centre for Policy Dialogue, and Akbar Ali Khan, a former advis-er to a caretaker government, along with others unveiled the report.

When some of the speakers crit-

icised the PPRC report from di� er-ent aspects, its Executive Chairman Hossain Zillur Rahman defended their study claiming that economic development would not continue without good governance. “If the GDP rises up to 20% it will fail if the government cannot provide dignity and security to the people.”

However, Rehman Sobhan said: “You can never run a report without proper explanation. Figures do not mean anything if there is no justi� -cation with it.”

The PPRC claims: “The political leadership has su� ered the steep-est decline in trustworthiness with which they are held by the citizens as institutions of government.”

The report states that 75.6% of the respondents had negative as-sessment compared to only 5.6% who were positive. As many as 17% people had an unchanged assess-ment.

Former bureaucrat Akbar Ali Khan said though there were lots of criticisms inside the PPRC survey, at the same time, “we need to � nd some indicators and this report can be an indicator.

“The World Bank also gives us some reports but that does not give

us any indicator. It is a multination-al corporation. We need our own data, information and indicators.”

Echoing Prof Sobhan, he said: “The PPRC needs to explain the data.”

As per the PPRC � ndings, 71.2% respondents think the police ser-vice has deteriorated. It also saysevery three out of � ve people suf-fered criminal incidents, while 70.9% a� ected people never sought redress.

The PPRC also found that 41% respondents did not seek remedy as their expectation about result was very low whereas some others think that it may invite fresh har-assment to their life as they have no con� dence on the law enforcement agencies.

The report was prepared after surveying 500 households mainly in Dhaka last year.

Another former adviser of a care-taker government, M Ha� zuddin Khan, said the police had been in-volved in politics with other agen-cies seriously.

He shared how he was mugged by criminals using government ve-hicle and the police remained reluc-tant despite being informed.

According to the PPRC report, corruption in politics and bureau-cracy was “setback for the nation.”

The report says 55% of the gov-ernment employees are taken from quotas, which should be cut down.

The respondents said the state of rule of law and judiciary, and the performance of RAB also deteriorat-ed.

Lawyer Syeda Rizwana Hasan said: “We always see the same state-ment from RAB when someone is found dead following arrest. It should be changed, or the force will lose the people’s respect.”

Farah Kabir said the society was also allowing crime through politi-cal and bureaucratic systems.

Hossain Zillur said the PPRC would run this type of survey every year and those would be more ad-vanced and pragmatic.

Along with others, TIB Execu-tive Director Iftekharuzzaman, Ex-ecutive Director of Brac Dr Sultan Hafeez Rahman, formed caretaker advisers Hasan Arif and Maj Gen Manjur Kader, former cabinet sec-retary Ali Imam Majumder, former member of the Planning Commis-sion Kazi Mezbahuddin also spoke at the programme. l

3RD-4TH PHASE UPAZILA POLLS

EC rejects plea to change voter areasn Mohammad Zakaria

The aspiring candidates of third- and fourth-phase upazila parishad polls would not be able to change their vot-er areas before the upcoming election, the Election Commission o� cials said yesterday.

The EC turned down applications of the aspiring contestants who prayed for a transfer of their names on vot-er registration roll to those areas they were intending to contest from.

In the last couple of days, over 100

applications were submitted to the EC for changing voter areas, a senior assis-tant secretary yesterday told the Dhaka Tribune.

The o� cial also said the aspirants submitted their applications to the commission, National Identity wing and respective election o� ces across the country.

The Election Commission will not allow the ambitious contestants to change their voter areas and vie for the poll.

The EC in this regard sent letters

signed by Senior Assistant Secretary Mahfuza Akter to all district and upazila election o� cers, asking them not to transfer voters from one area to another till the end of upazila parishad polls.

The commission took the decision considering the possibility of anoma-lies in voter roll.

Meanwhile, the commission has already announced the schedule of fourth-phase upazila parishad poll of which the � rst two phases would be held on February 19 and 27.

The EC is likely to announce soon the schedule of last phase upazila poll and complete the election race by March. It will start updating voter list from April next.

The commission will hold the upazi-la parishad poll using the existing voter list which was used in the recently held 10th parliament poll.

A record number of candidates of all political parties including Awa-mi League, BNP, Jatiya Party and Ja-maat-e-Islami are competing in the poll. l

Abducted child rescuedn Our Correspondent,

Sherpur

A child was rescued from Go-zaripara village under Jhinaigati upazila of Sherpur district yes-terday afternoon. He was orig-inally abducted from Banani in the capital.

Mohibul Islam Khan, addi-tional police superintendent said the child had been brought to a

house in the village 3-4 days ago after the abduction.

On the tip-o� , police rescued the child.

The police also arrested one Khokon Mia in connection with the incident.

According to sources, Khokon and the father of the child used to work together in the capital as ma-sons. Khokon might have abduct-ed the child over a family feud. l

Children pose with a dead � shing cat after killing the feline at Damkura area of Rajshahi. Although marked as one of the many endangered species in Bangladesh, the forestry department has failed to raise awareness among villagers to prevent such extinction DHAKA TRIBUNE

Ex-army man, 6 smugglers heldn BSS

RAB arrested six people, including a retired army person and policeman, for their alleged involvement in gold and dollar smuggling, after an overnight raid at Savar yesterday.

Rapid Action Battalion’s Media and Legal Wing Director ATM Habibur Rah-man said the six were arrested from Savar Bazar’s kitchen market area yes-terday.

The arrestees are retired army person Rejaul Haque, ASI Fajiqul Islam, Miran Khan, Shamsul Haque, Sujan Sheikh and Sabur Mia, chairman of Bohria Un-ion Parishad of Tangail district. l

Ershad hesitant about JaPa’s role in parliamentn Manik Miazee

Jatiya Party Chairman and former mil-itary strongman HM Ershad has doubt-ed his party’s role as opposition in the current 10th parliament.

He said yesterday it would have been better if the party had criticised the role of the government as opposi-tion, not as an ally of the government.

“Like others, I too am hesitation over Jatiya Party’s role as the opposition,” Er-shad said after attending annual sports of Banani Bidya Niketan in the capital.

“It would be better if the Jatiya Party did not join the cabinet,” he said in response to a question whether the JaPa could simul-taneously be pro-active being with the government and as the opposition.

“It would be appreciated if the peo-ple take the role of the Jatiya Party to evaluate the government’s action,” Er-shad said. He also claimed that there was no internal feud in his party.

For the next election, Ershad said he himself would give nominations. “If anyone tries to stand in the way, it will be an unworthy attempt.” l

Dhaka-New Delhi to form working group of MPs n Tribune Report

Speaker Shirin Sharmin Chaudhury yesterday said a working group would be formed comprising members of parliamentary standing committees of Bangladesh and India.

“The working group will jointly work on cutting poverty, connectivity, women empowerment, disaster man-agement, health, environment and oth-er issues,” she told journalists in India.

The speaker said necessary steps would be taken to make functional the friendship committee of Bangladesh and India.

Terming her visit to India success-ful, she said: “I am going back to Bang-ladesh with the high hope that the valuable bond of relationship between the two countries would enhance, un-resolved issues would be settled and cooperation would be further strength-ened in the coming days.”

During the visit, Shirin met Indian President Pranab Mukherjee, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Speaker Meira Kumar and discussed in details the common issues between the two countries.

She thanked India for making ar-rangements for Bangladesh to con-struct Rampal Power Plant and to sup-ply power from Tripura to Bangladesh.

Replying to a question, the speaker said democracy of Bangladesh was go-ing on the right way.

“Non-participation of any political party in election will not hamper � our-ishing of democracy,” she added. l

Padma Bridgeto be completedin 3 ½ yearsn Tribune Report

Communications Minister Obaidul Quader yesterday said the main work on the much-awaited Padma Bridge project would be completed within three and a half years.

“The construction work on the main bridge will begin in June next while that on river training in July,” he said.

Obaidul gave the information to re-porters after visiting Mawa-Jazira con-necting road at Madbarchar in Shibchar thana.

The minister said the construction of river protection dyke at Jazira point was at the last stage and the dyke at Mawa end would begin soon.

Obaidul Quader who frequently vis-its road construction works across the country said the 5% work on Mawa connecting road and 22% on Jazira con-necting road was completed. l

YET ANOTHER BLOW FOR LOCAL WILDLIFE

Politicians on both sides optimistic over initiative

News4 DHAKA TRIBUNE Sunday, February 16, 2014

City High Low

PRAYER TIMESFajar 5:15am

Sunrise 6:30amZohr 12:13am

Asr 4:18pmMagrib 5:54pm

Esha 7:10pmSource: IslamicFinder.org

WEATHER

Rain or thundershowers likely n UNB

Rain or thundershowers is likely to oc-cur at a few places over Khulna, Barisal, Chittagong, Dhaka and Sylhet divisions and at one or two places over Rajshahi and Rangpur divisions until 6pm today.

Night and day temperature may fall slightly over the country.

The sun sets in the capital at 5:54pm today and rises at 6:30am tomorrow.

Country’s highest temperature 30.5 degrees Celsius was recorded yesterday in Sitakunda and lowest 11.0 degrees in Sreemangal.

Highest and lowest temperature re-corded in some major cities yesterday were:

Dhaka 24.2 17.5 Chittagong 28.5 15.5 Rajshahi 20.5 14.5 Rangpur 16.8 13.1 Khulna 27.0 16.0 Barisal 27.2 14.6 Sylhet 17.4 15.3 Cox’s Bazar 28.8 16.0

Ganajagaran Mancha demands punishment of its ‘martyrs’n Tribune Report

Youth’s platform Ganajagaran Mancha has urged the government to immedi-ately arrest and try the people who were responsible for the killings of its activists including blogger Ahmed Razib Haider.

The demand was raised at a pro-gramme yesterday organised to pay respect to Razib Haider and other mar-tyrs who demanded capital punish-ment of all war criminals and a ban on

Jamaat-e-Islami’s politics, reports BSS.The platform emerged on February

5 last year demanding the highest pun-ishment to Abdul Quader Molla.

On February 15, the 10th day of the non-stop movement, miscreants killed Bolger Razib near his Mirpur house.

Spokesperson of the organisation Imran H Sarkar said the sacri� ces of all martyrs including Agrani Bank liftman Zafar Munshi had proved the mass peo-ple’s involvement with the movement. l

Factory, shops gutted n Tarek Mahmud, Chittagong

A shoe factory was gutted in a � re inci-dent at the Karnaphuli Export Process-ing Zone (KEPZ) in the city yesterday.

Md Jashim Uddin, deputy assistant director (DAD) of Fire Service and Civil Defence Headquarters told the Dhaka Tribune that the � re had originated from an electric short circuit in a warehouse of Sheng Tseng Enterprise Company Ltd, a Taiwanese shoe factory, at 12:55pm and engulfed the adjacent area soon.

On information, � re� ghters from

Agrabad, Bandar and EPZ Fire Stations went to the spot and doused the � re at 2:05pm with a lot of e� ort.

The losses in the incident could not be estimated till � ling this report.

Meanwhile, another � re originated from an electric short circuit at a shop in Marium Nagar Bazar area engulfed the adjoining 15 shops at around 1am.

Fire� ghters from Rangunia Fire Sta-tion went to the spot and doused the � re at 3:15am.

Valuables worth about Tk 12 lakh were gutted in the � re. l

‘Call to ensure press freedom’ n Mohammad Atiqur Rahman

A seminar was held yesterday in the city with a call to ensure press freedom in the country.

News Network and The Media Proj-ect hosted the seminar titled “Key Challenges for Media Freedom in Ban-gladesh” at the CIRDAP auditorium in the capital.

The discussants, in their addresses, focused on freedom of the press and challenges facing the journalists.

Farid Hossain, former Bureau Chief of the Associated Press in Dhaka, Zaglul Ahmed Chowdhury, advisory editor of The Financial Express, and Syed Badrul Ahsan, executive editor of the Daily Star, addressed the seminar.

In his address, Zaglul said: “When the question of freedom of the press comes, one rightly wonders whose freedom it is all about.”

He also spoke of the interference from the owners’ of the media houses both in print and electronic media.

Syed Badrul Ahsan also echoed the barriers, adding that writing anything against Nobel laureate Dr Muhammad

Yunus might cost one’s job.Saiful Huda, chief news Editor of

SATV, shared the experiences of hav-ing “phone calls” from the government asking to remove reports.

Huda pointed to one of the obsta-cles, saying, “We can’t write anything against RAB.”

However, according to the interna-tional media watchdog, Reporters Sans Frontièrs (RSF)'s World Press Freedom Index 2014, Bangladesh stands in 146 among 180 countries facing “di� cult

situation”.In 2013, Bangladesh’s position was

144 of 179 countries which were in “dangerous” category, in 2012 it was 129 of 179 countries, and in 2011 the rank was 144 of 179 countries termed “noticeable”.

While talking to the Dhaka Tribune, Dr Arne H Fjeldstad, CEO of The Me-dia Project, USA, said, religious issues should be treated in the media in a non-provocative way.

“Media must give everyone the right to be heard. Mind it, you are not politi-cal, you are a journalist,” added Fjeld-stad.

Farid Hossain said political and reli-gious extremism would emerge if elec-tion like January 5 takes place in future.

The speakers also talked about the guarantee of the journalists’ security while interviewing a lawmaker like Shamim Osman.

Journalists from both print and electronic media attended the seminar while Shahiduzzaman, editor and CEO of the News Network, moderated the programme chaired by Dr Arne H Fjeldstad. l

Protest rally called against Rampal power plant n Tribune Report

The National Committee to Protect Oil, Gas, Mineral Resources, Power and Ports has called for countrywide protest ral-lies, including in the capital, for February 26 to press home their seven point de-mands and cancellation of the 1,320MW coal-� red Rampal power plant project.

The announcement came from a press conference held at Mukti Bhaban auditorium in the capital’s Purana Pal-tan yesterday.

Kollol Mustafa, a member of the citi-zen’s platform, in a written statement said: “The government has been ignor-ing the public demand for cancelling the Rampal power plant project which will destroy the biodiversity of the Sun-darbans.”

He alleged that the government was protecting the interests of local and in-ternational land grabbers rather than the environmental threats.

“Indian company NTPC is imple-menting the project violating the law of their country and as a result, [Bangla-

deshi] people have to buy electricity in higher price to provide more pro� ts for them,” he said.

Among others, Convener of the or-ganisation Sheikh Mohammad Sha-hidullah and member Ruhin Hossain were present at the programme.

The national committee in Septem-ber last year observed a long march demanding annulment of the power project, situated on the bank of Pashur River, in Bagerhat. The prime minister inaugurated the construction of the plant in early October.

Speakers at the press conference said the government had chosen a dangerous path for the bene� t of land grabbers under the pretext of mitigat-ing power crisis.

Apart from halting the Rampal proj-ect, their other demands include can-celling the agreements of quick rental power, setting up new plants under the government arrangement and renovat-ing the state-owned power plants and enacting a law for banning export of mineral resources. l

PSC scholarship to be awarded today n Tribune Report

The awardees for the Primary Scholarship Award 2013 will be announced today.

Based on the results of Primary School Certi� cate examinations last year, around 22,000 students would be awarded under the talent-pool category while around 33,000 students would be awarded under the general category.

Mass education Minister Mosta� zur Rahman will announce the result at the secretariat around 12:30pm. l

1st round of Bangladesh Mathematics Olympiad endsn Tazlina Zamila Khan

Out of the 1,055 students coming from 22 districts, around 70 emerged from the 12th Bangladesh Mathematics Olympiad yesterday to make their way to participate in the 55th International Mathematics Olympiad (IMO).

The result was announced at capi-tal’s Saint Joseph School.

From the selected, around 30 will be part of camp to be held in seven divi-sions across the country from March 12.

For SSC candidates, a separate camp will start from March 28.

Based on performance, 12 partici-pants will � nally be selected for an extension campaign to be held in May from which around � ve best candi-dates will be selected to contest in the IMO to be held from July 3-12 in South Africa.

“It is a thrill to come � rst, I cannot express my feelings in words,” said Nur Mohammad Sa� ullah, a student of Dhaka College who secured the � rst position and achieved the “Champions

of the Champions” award by obtaining the highest mark (81 out of 100) under the higher secondary category.

“The competition was tough, so one must take the preparations for 4-5 months to get selected,” he added.

Winners were awarded in four cat-egories- primary, junior, secondary and higher secondary-with certi� cates, medals and crests for grabbing positions of � rst, � rst runner–up, second runners-up and champion of the champions.

Samiul Bashar, a student of Scholars School and College, said: “I love math. Losing the competition will not stop me from practicing math. I have learnt a lot of things which will help me in fu-ture.”

Some of the winners were awarded prize bonds of Tk8,000-Tk12,000 un-der memorial awards including Jamal Nazrul Islam memorial prize, Lutfur Rahman memorial prize, and Sojol-Kajol memorial prize.

Under the Rubik’s Cube competition, three students received crests for solv-ing questions within shortest time. l

Singra BNP observes half-day strike n Our Correspondent, Natore

A half-day hartal was observed yes-terday in Singra upazila of the dis-trict demanding the disclosure of the whereabouts of BNP’s Organising Sec-retary Ibrahim Khalil Fatik, who was alledgedly kidnapped by plainclothes police from High Court area recently.

The hartal was observed from 6am to 12pm and a rally was also held at the Singra Bazar area.

Upazila BNP President Abul Kalam Azad, Secretary Majibar Rahman and Joint Secretary Dauder Mahmud spoke at the rally, among others.

Speakers blamed the government for Ibrahim’s kidnaping from the High Court area as the court premises re-mains heavily guarded with law en-forcers always. They demanded the disclosure of their leader’s where-abouts soon.

Ibrahim Khalil Fatik was alledgedly kidnapped on February 10 afternoon when he was coming out from the High Court after receiving bail on upazila Awami League leader Fazlar Rahman Fanu murder case.

A group identifying themselves as plainclothes police had picked him up but since then there was no trace of him, sources claimed. l

In 2013, Bangladesh’s position was 144 of 179 countries which were in' dangerous' category, in 2012 it was 129 of 179 countries, and in 2011 the rank was 144 of 179 countries termed 'noticeable'

The collapse took place due to faulty construction. Besides, the workers were not wearing any safety gears

2 construction workers die in underground wall collapse n Ashif Islam Shaon

Two construction workers were killed, while two sustained injuries, when a protection wall collapsed on them at the capital’s Uttar Badda area yesterday afternoon.

The incident took place when they were working at the basement of a building beside Badda General Hospital around 2pm.

The deceased were identi� ed as Abdul Jalil, 32, and Md Aslam, 35. Both Jalil and Aslam died on spot while Abdul Motaleb, 50, and Saddam Hossain sus-tained injures in the incident. The in-jured were rushed to the Dhaka Medi-cal College Hospital after the incident.

“The workers were working around 10 feet beneath the surface. A tempo-rary 10 inch-wide wall was built around the basement so that mud cannot slide in. Suddenly, a portion of the wall’s western end wall collapsed on the

workers who were near the edge of the basement. There were more four work-ers at the site, but they remained un-hurt,” injured Motaleb told the Dhaka Tribune.

“Several holes were dug near the wall to build pillars, which might also be responsible for the collapse,” he opined. The collapsed wall was built just a month back.

Badda police station o� cer-in-charge said, ten doctors of the General Hospital own the 10-katha plot and were jointly constructing a six-storey building.

“We have picked up one Anwar Hos-sain, a sub-contractor of the building, and two construction supervisors for interrogation. We are trying to locate the whereabouts of the building’s own-ers,” said the OC.

However, residents in the area claimed the land was owned by a lo-cal named Mohsin and he, along with some doctors, were building a private hospital there. Meanwhile, a team from the Fire Service and Civil Defense vis-ited the spot and searched for victims from beneath the rubble.

“No one was trapped under the wall. The collapse took place due to faulty construction. Besides, the workers were not wearing any safety gears,” Md Ra� qul Islam, assistant director of the � re service, told Dhaka Tribune.

Police said a case will be � led in this connection and the owners and detain-ees will be interrogated. l

Kazi Shahid Ahmed unveils autobiography n Rabiul Islam

‘Jiboner Shilalipi’, an autobiography by Kazi Shahid Ahmed, chairman of Gemcon Group, was unveiled at Ban-gla Academy Auditorium in the capital yesterday.

At the launching ceremony, many eminent citizens applauded his art of expression, choice of words and depic-tion of his real life, and hoped that read-ers would � nd many issues in the book regarding society, politics and economy.

The ceremony was attended by Edu-cation Secretary Zillur Rahman Sid-diqui, Professor Ra� qul Islam, Profes-sor Jahanara Begum, Columnist Syed Abul Maksud, Samakal Editor Golam Sarwar, Kaler Kantha Editor Imdadul Haque Milon, Litterateur Debesh Roy from India, Public Administration Sec-retary Kamal Abdul Naser Chowdhury and Publisher of The Dhaka Tribune Kazi Anis Ahmed, among others.

Professor Ra� qul Islam said it is dif-� cult to frankly express everything of somebody’s real life but Kazi Shahid has done it in an honest manner.

Syed Abul Maksud said the new generation would be able to learn a lot

from his book. “Kazi Shahid has disclosed himself

openly, which is very rare. The read-ers can learn about society, politics and economics from his book,” he added.

Samakal Editor Golam Sarwar said: “Kazi Shahid has openly disclosed the poverty of his ancestral family during his childhood. He has also introduced a new kind of newspaper through pub-

lishing Ajker Kagoj, a daily Bengali newspaper.”

“So far I have read the book, it seems to me that the book is extraordinary,” Imdadul Haque Milon observed.

The launching ceremony also wit-nessed the performances of Sadi Mu-hammad and Amina Ahmed.

The book has been published by Agamir Prokashoni. l

Kazi Shahid Ahmed poses for a photograph during the launch of his autobiography ‘Jiboner Shilalipi’ at Bangla Academy Auditorium yesterday RAJIB DHAR

Fire� ghters and locals dig into the rubbles of a collapsed wall in search of victims at he capital’s Uttar Badda area yesterday BANGLAR CHOKH

News 5DHAKA TRIBUNE Sunday, February 16, 2014

Mismanagement rife at Gazipur correctional centren Our Correspondent, Gazipur

Parents of teenagers detained at the Gazi-pur Juvenile Correctional Centre have claimed that most of the time, they had to wait for hours to see their children due to the alleged mismanagement and neg-ligence of suspended supervisor AnwarulKabir.

“I had to wait two to three hoursfor getting permission before meetingmy child. Most of the time I returnedhome without seeing my son,” said Ali Akbar of Sripur upazila in Gazipurdistrict.

Ali said his son had made several al-

legations of torture against the supervi-sor, who would often badmouth the par-ents and torture them mentally. Ali also claimed that his son was accused in falsecases.

A businessman at College Gate near the correctional facility, who asked his name not be used, said, “Parents of the teenagers could be seen waiting and standing before the gate for hours. Some would be crying while returning home.”

Meanwhile, a � ve-member committee formed by High Court on Thursday has started probing the reported mismanage-ment at the centre.

The committee, headed by Gazipur Ad-

ditional Deputy Commissioner Shahnawaz Dilruba Khan, is expected to submit a report within seven working days.

After visiting the centre yesterday as part of the investigation, Director General of the Department of Social Services Ai-yub Hossain said the teenagers, who had wounded themselves with razors, were un-dergoing treatment at the centre provided by a medical team from Tongi GovernmentHospital.

“We are taking care of the injured regu-larly,” said Gazipur Civil Surgeon Dr Shah Alam.

“I have never heard of such an inci-dent at the centre before. The teenage

inmates have received treatment from Tongi Government Hospital many times before. We usually took them to the hos-pital when they caught fever or cold,” thedoctor said.

Ziaur Rahman Chowdhury, the present supervisor in charge, said, “The injured are � ne now. The matter was informed to high-er authorities.”

About 20 boys, aged between 14 and 18, slashed their own foreheads, arms and wrists on Tuesday night to demand the removal of acting supervisor Anwarul Kabir for allegedly torturing the inmates, most of whom are under trial for various rimes. l

JU teachers demand reformation of senate body n JU Correspondent

A section of Jahangirnagar University teachers yesterday demanded recon-stitution of the university’s present senate body before holding of the vice chancellor panel election, which is scheduled for Thursday.

The teachers, under the banner “Muk-tijuddho O Progotibadi Chetonay Biswasi Shikkhokder Jote,” also demanded changing the legal procedure to elect a new senate before the VC panel election.

Sajed Ashraf Karim, a former dean of the social science faculty, presented the demands at a press conference held

at the teachers’ lounge of the new arts faculty in the afternoon.

“The validity of some 63 senate members of the university has expired. Avoiding this serious issue, the [VC] election schedule has been declared to protect the interest of a particular par-ty, which is clearly a perfect example of partiality,” the professor claimed, read-ing out from a written statement.

The Muktijuddho Jote, consisting of pro-Awami League and left leaning teachers, also called for following the university act properly in holding the VC panel poll in a credible manner.

After months of agitation by a group

of teachers forced ex-VC Anwar Hos-sain to resign last month, JU Chancellor President Abdul Hamid ordered a new VC panel election to be held within a month with the incumbent senate.

Following the chancellor’s order, acting VC MA Matin scheduled the next VC election for February 20.

Sixty-three of the senate’s 93 mem-bers ended their tenures at various times over the past one year. Out of the 30 remaining members, 10 are govern-ment appointed.

According to JU rules, former senate members can participate in universi-ty elections until their successors are

named, but many believe the practice to be unethical.

Some teachers also criticised the president’s directive to hold the VC election within 30 days.

“The president cannot issue such a directive in a self-ruling institution. This is a violation of the constitution of the country and the university act,” claimed A T M Atikur Rahman, a pro-fessor of history.

Nasim Akter Hossain, convenor of “Shikkhok Shomaj”, said if necessary, the left-leaning teachers’ group would launch a movement and go to court on the issue. l

Artworks of 2 local artists selected for Unesco exhibitionn UNB

Artworks of Rokeya Sultana and Kanak Chanpa Chakma, two eminent women artists from Bangladesh, have been se-lected for exhibition at Unesco Head-quarters in Paris.

Unesco Director General Irina Boko-va will inaugurate the exhibition on March 7. The exhibition will remain open to public till March 21.

The exhibition is being organised jointly by Unesco and its member states to celebrate the International Women’s Day on March 8, said a Foreign Ministry media release issued yesterday.

The theme of this year’s celebration is “Challenges and achievements in the implementation of the Millennium De-velopment Goals for Women and Girls.”

The artworks of Rokeya Sultana and Kanak Chanpa Chakma have been selected to represent the Asia-Paci� c region.

Their artworks will be displayed alongside artworks of seven other re-nowned artists from Ajerbaijan, Boliv-ia, Benin, Bulgaria, Canada, Peru and Russia.l

115th birth anniversary of Jibanananda tomorrow n Our Correspondent, Barisal

Barisal city, the ancestral home of poet Jibanananda Das, is all set to observe his 115th birth anniversary on Monday.

Jibanananda was born on February 17 in 1899 in a Vaidya-Brahmin family in the small district town of Barisal,

To mark the day, the Barisal branch of the Jatiya Kabita Parishad will orga-nise a programme at Poet Jibanananda Memorial Hall built at Jibanananda’s parental home situated on the Kabi Ji-banananda Das Sarak, a road that was named after the poet in 2008.

Barisal B M College, the college where the poet studied, will hold a day-long festival on campus featur-ing discussions on the life, works and achievements of the poet.

Professor Fazlul Huq, principal of the college would be present as the chief guest at the festival. He said a fes-tival observance committee had been formed in this regard headed by Pro-fessor Shah Sajeda.

A cultural programme would be held in the morning. Singers Maqsud, Ka� l Ahmed, and two bands, Sohojia and Chit-kar, would perform in the latter segment in the afternoon, said Abdullah Mahfuz, one of the organisers of the festival.

Jibanananda Das is best known as the poet of “Ruposhi Bangla” and is the creator of “Banalota Sen,” an unparal-lel character embodying all facets of a Bengali beauty.

Contemporary poets and other art-ists also sent a message of remember-ance to all concerned and said that other events will also be hosted soon to remember the great poet. They also an-nounced severa book launches to mark the occaision l

Math festival held in cityn Tribune Report

The Seventh National Aloha Abacus & Mental Arithmetic Festival 2014 was held on Friday at the Shaheed Suhrawardy Indoor Stadium in the cap-ital’s Mirpur.

Bishwa Sahitya Kendra Chairman Ab-dullah Abu Sayeed, who was the chief guest at the programme, advised stu-dents who took part in the math compe-tition to dream big for making their own lives as well the country beautiful.

“Our future will be beautiful if our childhood and teenage life is beautiful. If we want to build a beautiful nation, we have to beautify our childhood and teenage life,” he said.

Airtel Bangladesh Chief Service O� -cer Rubaba Dowla and Akij Food & Bev-erage Ltd Deputy General Manager Md Sha� qul Islam Tushar were present at the function as special guests. Loh Mun Sung, founder of Aloha International, was also present at the function.

The program was associated by Fru-tika mango drink as prime sponsor,

Fresh milk powder as platinum spon-sor, Novoair, Igloo ice cream & Al-Has-san Diamond Gallery as gold sponsor. The strategic partner was Pressmeet.

Aloha Mental Arithmetic is an interna-tionally recognized training programme that has bene� tted over � ve million stu-dents in 27 di� erent countries including

the USA, Australia, Spain, Saudi Arabia, India, Pakistan and Philippines.

Aloha Bangladesh is the � rst compa-ny to bring internationally recognized and accepted Aloha Mental Arithmetic program from Malaysia to Bangladesh for the total brain development for children aged between four and 14. l

Chhatra League men assault journalistn Our Correspondent, Barisal

Chhatra League activists allegedly at-tacked a journalist of daily Samakal yesterday for publishing a report on terrorist activities of the group in Bari-sal on Saturday.

The victim is Moniruzzaman Monir, Gournadi upazila correspondent of the daily Samakal and former president of the Gournadi press club.

He was admitted to the Gournadi upazila health complex.

The criminals also vandalised elec-tion camps of a BNP candidate for the upazila poll.

Firoz Sardar, an activist of Ch-hatra League was arrested in thisconnection.

Witnesses said Monir came under the attack while supervising work at his business near the Gournadi bus stand around 1:30 pm.

A group of criminals led by Jo-bayerul Islam Santu Bhuiya, secretary of Gournadi Government College Unit of Chhatra League had mercilessly beaten up journalist Monir leaving him injured, they said.

Jobayerul is an accused in a murder case who was out on a bail, said police

Shouting out bad words, the Chha-tra League men accused the journalist for publishing exaggerated and fabri-cated news on terrorist activities of Ch-htra League.

The shop of Monir was ransacked and two construction workers were also injured in the attack.

Monir lodged a case with Gournadi police station accusing ten including � ve BCL men by name.

BNP leader and former lawmaker Zahiruddin Swapan condemned the at-tack and demanded punishment to the attackers. l

Poor drainage a headache for Hazaribagh localsFacilities cannot keep up with rising demands; government at loggerheads with local businessesn Abu Hayat Mahmud

The residents of the capital’s Hazarib-agh area continue to su� er from the long-running troubles of ine� ective drains and potholed roads in the area, allegedly because of negligence from authorities concerned.

During a recent visit to the area, the Dhaka Tribune found many roads to be in dilapidated shape because of hap-hazard digging of the roads for install-ing sewage lines of Dhaka Water Supply and Sewerage Authority (Wasa).

Ataur Rahman, a resident of the Am-bia Mosque Market area, said although the sewage project had been completed by Wasa around six months ago, the re-pairing of the dug roads was yet to begin.

The slabs covering the drains in the area were also found to be broken; Ataur claimed faulty construction by the con-tractors had caused the slabs to crack within months of being constructed.

Admitting to the dismal condition of the drains in Hazaribagh, Chief Engineer of Dhaka South City Corporation (DSCC) Zahangir Alam told the Dhaka Tribune: “The drains in Hazaribagh were made about 100 years back. From current per-spective, their condition is not good.”

“We have tried to widen the drains in the area, but it created di� culties as the roads had cracked because of the digging for drain space,” he added.

Zahangir said the city corporation was ready to widen roads and drains if the locals agreed to provide land on both sides of the existing roads.

“But the real problem is no one wants to sacri� ce their own land,” he added.

Although the populace in Hazaribagh has grown exponentially and the num-ber of tanneries has increased, there has not been adequate revamp of the road-side drains in the areas, locals alleged.

The inadequate drainage system also causes water to become clogged in

the area during rainy season, resulting in breeding grounds for mosquitoes.

The situation has worsened as over 200 tanneries in the area wash, dry and process raw hide inside factories and on open areas, causing even more blockage in the drains. The chemical

and liquid wastes of the tanneries also regularly over� ow from the narrow drains, causing health hazards for the locals as well as engul� ng the area with an unbearable stench.

Despite repeated calls by locals and di� erent environmental rights bodies,

the move to relocate tanneries from the capital to Savar has remained sus-pended for a decade, because of dis-agreements between the authorities and tannery owners over who should bear the cost of the move.

After a public interest litigation was

lodged, the High Court in June 2009 asked the government to relocate the tanneries from Dhaka to a proposed leather estate at Harindhara, Savar by February 28, 2010 or face shutdowns. The government has repeatedly sought more time. l

Students lock CU department, journo assaultedn FM Mizanur Rahaman

The students of the Computer Science and Engineering Department of Chit-tagong University yesterday put the class-rooms, including that of the department chair, under lock and key demanding that the authorities hold their long-awaited yearly examinations in no time.

Campus sources said the agitated third year students of CSE Department of the 2009-2010 session shut down the rooms around 11am to press home their demand.

“The department is yet to take any steps to hold our examinations al-though 22 months have elapsed,” said Saiful Alam Saif, a third year student of the department.

On information, police and the proctorial team rushed to the spot and managed to open the locks around 1pm assuring the students of necessary measures to hold exams immediately.

Dr Khairul Alam, chairman of the CSE Department, could not be reached for comments on the issue.

Meanwhile, Bangladesh Chhatra League activists harassed Sakerul Haque Toru, university correspondent of the daily Inqilab, physically while covering the incident.

Professor Siraj Uddowla, proctor of the university, said they had received a verbal complaint from the newsman and were looking into the matter. l

A recent photo shows workers repairing the drainage line of a road in the capital’s Hazaribagh area. Although the sewerage project had been completed by Wasa around six months ago, the repairing of the depleted roads was yet to begin MAHMUD HOSSAIN OPU

Winners of 7th National Aloha Abacus & Mental Arithmetic Festival 2014 pose for a photograph at Shaheed Suhrawardy Indoor Stadium yesterday DHAKA TRIBUNE

6 FeatureDHAKA TRIBUNE Sunday, February 16, 2014

Cycling for recycling

n Syeda Samira Sadeque

“Inspiration – it’s a matter of time, as long as you are persistent with your purpose. You cannot get it from anyone else un-

less you have it within you, unless you want to change something,” he said.

I am sitting at a Dhanmondi cafe with Muntasir Mamun, recipient of the World Bank backed Connect4Climate prize.

He is a man of myriad identities: re-searcher, climber, hiker, and photogra-pher. Professionally, he currently works for the � ight department at the Korean organisation Young One in Dhaka.

But his most interesting identity is that of the biker who crossed the Unit-ed States to raise awareness about cli-mate change.

Over a cup of co� ee, he delves into the details of his trip.

Muntasir and his biking partner Mo-hammad Ujjal began their trip to the US in May 2012. They set out on a 66 day trip that would cover 3,446 miles across 12 states: Washington, Idaho, Montana, South Dakota, Nebraska, Iowa, Illinois, Indiana, Wyoming, West Virginia, Virginia, and Maryland, and ending in Washington, DC.

Upon completion of their tour, Muntasir and Ujjal received the Con-nect4Climate Special Prize in the Voic-es4Climate competition, and Muntasir was declared an International Climate Leader by The Climate Reality Project.

Launched by the World Bank, the Italian Ministry of Environment, and the Global Environment Facility (GEF) in collaboration with more than 140 global partners in September 2011, C4C is now a global partnership programme dedicat-ed to climate change communications.

Muntasir had years of experience in both research and biking, and decided to use it to raise awareness in the US – and in turn, to bene� t Bangladesh.

“The � rst question here is: ‘Why the United States?’ It is because they have the highest per capita plastic consump-tion in the world, and that e� ects us all the way over here in Bangladesh. Why? Because plastic-based products require a lot of water and energy,” he said.

Muntasir developed a phone appli-cation called Trash Maniac. If anyone sees recyclable material that has been discarded, he or she can “check it in”

on the app, which notes the location where the material was found. This al-lows local collectors to track the loca-tion of recyclable goods and increase the e� ciency of their system, Muntasir said. He used this app during his Amer-ican cross-country journey.

Muntasir had been planning this trip since 2008, but faced di� culties with his visa.

“The � rst time I was denied the visa, I went to biking in Brazil instead,” he said. “Then I went to Mexico for two months, and Australia for two months.” He also spent time in Egypt and Europe biking.

In 2011, he was invited for a confer-ence in Hawaii to present his paper on marine debris – a research he had been

in involved with for eight years, but was denied a visa for the third time.

“Nothing is the end of the world for me. When I got rejected, I went to Kashmir, for a winter trek on the Cha-dar river.” While it was frozen over.

Upon his return from Kashmir, he was noti� ed that his US visa was ready to be picked up. At last he embarked for the trip that helped make history. He and his partner were the � rst Muslims and South Asians to complete a cross-country biking tour.

“Before I went, I had posted on a lot of blogs regarding my travel plans. Many would respond by saying: ‘If you are going all the way to the US, why work with waste?’” He laughed. “But I always maintained that I am doing this

thing, and it shouldn’t only be about me and for me. It should be for a great-er purpose.”

During his time in the US, he – along with the cause he was working for – was welcomed warmly and much ap-preciated. The people were also very hospitable, with few families even of-fering the duo shelters. They did not have reservations about accepting o� ers from strangers. “Of course we went! We had nothing to lose!”

Re� ecting on the Bangladeshi popu-lation’s lack of interest in curbing our basic problem of littering, he said: “This problem will continue. But you go forward in your own way. The way I did. I didn’t need an army for what I did, I just went ahead and did it.” l

‘Why the US? Because they have the highest per capita plastic consumption in the world, and that e� ects us all the way over here in Bangladesh’

COURTESY

COURTESY

n Tasnuva Amin Nova

Home to a large and growing group of tech-savvy youngsters, Bangladesh is gradually becoming a major startup hub. The scene is particularly exciting in the capital, where the use of Internet is growing at an exponential rate.

To highlight this brewing culture, as well as to encourage and inspire lo-cals to become entrepreneurs, organis-ers of last November’s StartupBashBD produced a � lm entitled Startup Dha-ka through which the � lm’s director Musta� z Khan wanted to draw global attention to the country’s steps towards technology-based entrepreneurship.

Feature presentationMd Fahad Ifaz, co-founder of Amarcv.com, comments on the � lm: “At � rst I did not know what to expect from Start-up Dhaka, but after it came out, getting featured seemed more than just a cool thing. In fact, it was an organised e� ort to document the issues that startles any new business, the motivation and the story behind every little dream.”

Amarcv.com is a web-based plat-form where fresh graduates or any job seeker can create their CVs by simply entering required information on a step-by-step process. The idea � rst came to the founder’s mind from his observation of his relatives and friends facing di� culty in making their CVs.

Among other pioneering enterpris-es featured in the � lm are Amar Desh Amar Gram, a website that links rural farmers and urban consumers, Chaldal, an online grocery store and Dugdugi, a website for listening to and download-ing Bangla songs.

Musta� z addresses the act that there are only a handful of women entrepre-neurs in the � lm.

“Tech startups have globally been a male-dominated sector and there is no logical explanation of why this is. In

Bangladesh, however, the ratio is com-paratively impressive. Through this � lm, I have deliberately focused more on women in the � eld.”

For example, they interview the f ounders of Maya, the � rst Bangladeshi website entirely dedicated to women, expressing the need for more encour-agement and contribution from the so-ciety to empower women.

Show me the money“There are innovative entrepreneurs building inspiring business models in Bangladesh, who can disrupt industries at a global scale, like NewsCred,” says Fayaz Taher, an angel investor current-ly based in Bangladesh. Newscred is a leading startup founded in Bangladeshi that recently raised $25m in investment.

Through this � lm, the founders say they have tried to not only create awareness and inspire entrepreneur-ship, but also show the pathway to start a business, starting from getting � -nanced. It introduces sources of funds which are quite new to Bangladesh, despite expressing concern about the lack of trust and regulatory framework needed to establish a formal angel net-work in Bangladesh.

“Angel investment is a viable fund-ing option for startups in Bangladesh, where startups can � nd an angel or a group of angels here to purchase eq-

uity of their company, and get not only monetary funding, but also an invalu-able rolodex of contacts and priceless experience and knowledge,” says Sam-ad Miraly, investor at Empty Ventures.

The � lm itself raised funds through a campaign in Indiegogo, an interna-tional platform where people from anywhere in the world with access to international payments options can contribute to � nance a project, where it raised an amount that exceeded 6% of their initial target. Crowd funding on the Internet is yet to receive popularity in our country but traditional crowd funding where we seek money from our relatives and friends has been – and continues to be – practiced.

Samad’s take on such funding is simple. “There’s more to funding start-ups than just money. You also need people with expert opinions to guide you in the initial stages of starting out which is not available through crowd funding.”

The patriotsFounders of Startup Dhaka dream of creating a better Bangladesh for all through entrepreneurship. In the fu-ture, they want to explore local ven-tures, which will not be restricted to technology startups only.

“With 160 million people and over 100 million mobile subscribers, Bang-ladesh is the ideal destination for in-novation, and our ideas will soon turn into businesses that will accelerate our economic growth,” said the � rst-time director.

The “story of possibilities,” as they refer the � lm, showcases the positive expectations about Bangladeshi entre-preneurship to the world. This leaves only one option for the youth: to be-lieve in their ideas, and get started.

Musta� z adds: “We wanted this to be a voice saying: “We are here to help you with your dreams.’” l

The startup story A local documentary highlights emerging tech businesses

The number of female participants

at the festival was inspiring, although

there were far fewer women

visitors. But the command the

‘robotics ladies’ showed over

their machines was something to

celebrate

The ‘story of possibilities,’ as they refer the � lm, showcases the positive expectations about Bangladeshi entrepreneurship to the world

A student from American International University-Bangladesh explains the Falcon Drone, a low-cost drone he and his team produced that can be sent to places where humans cannot go in certain circumstances. For example, this robot can reach inside a building on � re to detect the presence of human life

Last week at National Sports Council, Paltan, Dhaka

Bangladeshi bikers take their cause to the United States

National Robotics Festival 2014

PHOTOS: NASHIRUL ISLAM

Career 7DHAKA TRIBUNE Sunday, February 16, 2014

Opportunities calling: The world of Chartered AccountingInsights to succeed and prosper at the increasingly popular � eld in Bangladeshn Nakibul Hoq and Naiian Yazdani

Today, a nation’s prosperity in the global village is achieved through trade and commerce. As the proverbial walls have been torn down between na-tions, the ability to

access products, services and invest-ments between nations has eased. In this world, the integrity and quality of the � nance function are paramount to achieving prosperity.

In this backdrop, professional ac-countants have become a sought-after breed. Today accountants are not just bookkeepers. They are managers, ana-lytical thinkers and high self-monitors complemented by sincerity and dedi-cation.

They form a collective group of highly talented global professionals who can reach their utmost potentials through their hard work and self-im-provement. Their importance cannot be understated, because these bearers of integrity leave their imprint across all large organisations both in Bangla-desh and abroad.

A Chartered Accountant (CA) in Ban-gladesh, like the rest of his peers all across the globe, is highly sought after not only by accountancy � rms but also by MNCs, listed companies, public tax-ation departments and � nancial insti-tutions.

The plethora of options for CAs are one of its biggest attractions, and un-rivalled by any other industry. If you wish, you can be a management con-sultant helping strategise the direction of the business.

At other times, you will be an inde-pendent auditor examining � nancial statements at the end of the company’s

� scal year. These options are derived from the ability of CAs to see the busi-ness from a micro perspective with in-built analytical cognition.

CAs in Bangladesh are used by com-panies in their top-level management. They serve as � nancial controllers, chief � nancial o� cers, internal audi-tors, � nance directors, chief accoun-tants, vice presidents and even CEOs. They also serve on the boards of direc-tors of companies not just because of their image as trustworthy, sincere and dedicated professionals but also for the insight they bring into the business process. After all, if you are a chartered accountant, you have already set your bar of expectations from others at ex-tremely high levels.

To become a CA is not simply a

choice; rather, one has to pass a rig-orous examination process combined with practical experience. It will re-quire commitment, self-improvement and technical accounting skills to pass through a chartered accountancy exam in Bangladesh. One of the toughest ex-ams administered in this country, it re-

quires a blend of many positive virtues. You must be quick and neat with

what you do, and your analytical skills must always be better than those be-side you. You have to be able to cope with extremely complex problems, tight deadlines and must always see things through until the end.

Most importantly, you have to be ambitious, practical and dedicated. Once you set the bar this high for your-self and start working to achieve that ceiling, nothing can hinder you. The re-wards after you pass the exams and be-come an established professional will be well worth the sacri� ce. Have we mentioned the � nancial rewards? The compensation package you receive will be more ful� lling and lucrative than anything else!

The opportunities will also follow, and casting an eye across Bangladesh, we have seen CAs serving as elected members of the National Parliament and as ministers. Mohammad Saifur Rahman, the longest serving Finance Minister of Bangladesh, was a Char-tered Accountant and one of the found-ers of Rahman Rahman Huq (currently KPMG Bangladesh), a premier account-ing � rm of the country.

AHM Mustafa Kamal, currently Planning Minister for the People’s Re-public of Bangladesh and elected rep-resentative of Comilla-10, is an FCA besides being the President and CEO of the Bangladeshi conglomerate Lotus Kamal Group.

One misconception that needs to be cleared is that one does not need to be

an accounting major at the undergrad-uate level in order to become a success-ful CA. According to AF Nesaruddin, FCA and Partner at Hoda Vasi Chowd-hury and Co: “You don’t have to neces-sarily be a degree holder in accounting. You can be a � nance, economics or any other business major, or even a math-ematics student. What is more import-ant is the ambition and the discipline. Once you have entrenched these qual-ities inside you, there’s nothing to stop you from becoming a chartered ac-countant.”

As a career with extremely high growth potential in today’s modern world, chartered accountancy can open horizons for you that not many other professional degrees can. Do ex-pect to work hard though. To � ourish in this sector, � rst you need to pass the chartered accountancy exams adminis-tered by the Institute of Chartered Ac-countants of Bangladesh (ICAB).

You will have to work at entry-level positions in recognised chartered ac-countancy � rms like Hoda Vasi Chow-dhury and Co, KPMG Bangladesh etc. It is only then, once you have done your time with due diligence, that you will be equipped to reach the top echelons and have success.

Next week we will be featuring an in depth analysis of the accountancy pro-fession examining why young gradu-ates are increasingly interested in pur-suing this career through an interview with AF Nesaruddin. l

Nakibul Hoq is a Research Analyst at GradConnect, an international career information and advisory � rm. You can email him at nakib@grad-connect.com. Naiian Yazdani is the Director of Strategy at GradConnect. You can email him at naiian@grad-connect.com and � nd more career information at www.grad-insights.com and www.grad-connect.com.

How my UWC experience at Waterford Kamhlaba shaped my worldviewn Itmum Momin

As I landed at the tiny airport, the heav-ens opened up and I was drenched be-fore I could � nd a taxi. On my way to my new home, I spent the entire ride staring out of the window, waiting for the next awe-inspiring bolt of lightning in an otherwise grey, cloudy sky. The dancing lightning with the back-drop of the lush hills and mountains made for a spectacular view. The only reason I looked away was because the taxi driver informed me that lightning often kills people here in Swaziland. “Wonderful,” I muttered under my breath, “Just had to pick the UWC in Africa!”

A little backstory: I was o� ered a scholarship to Waterford Kamhlaba, the United World College located in Swaziland, Southern Africa. I accept-ed the o� er without hesitation. People gave me strange responses, the most common of which was “Oh you’re go-ing to Switzerland to study!”

After clarifying that it was Swazi-land, which is a tiny kingdom in South-ern Africa, the usual response was, “Why in the world are you going to Africa?” I did not pay much attention to them. I had wanted to go to a UWC since the 8th grade in Sunbeams and when the opportunity came, I did what I could to seize it. I was going to go to Africa, a country where HIV is preva-lent in almost half the population! A far o� country in a strange land where I was told people would speak weird languages!

At the end of my journey, as I sat on top of the Waterford Mountain and gazed upon what had been my home for the last two years, I realised that all those things were true. I was indeed in Africa. So what?

Africa is not a country. It is a con-tinent comprising various countries. The traditions of each of these nations are quite di� erent. The languages they speak (Siswati, Shona, Zulu, etc.) did indeed sound strange to me, but then again, so does Spanish, French, Dutch, and German. The people I met in this school changed my life forever. I was going to school with people from over 50 di� erent nationalities!

I was immersed in a sea of di� erent cultures and I did my best to enjoy all of them while holding on to my own. Each of us looked at the same thing in di� erent ways and took di� erent ap-proaches to the same problem. We did not necessarily agree or see eye to eye on everything but because of my ex-perience, I now have a tolerance and respect of how di� erent people have di� erent perspectives.

From the globally controversial topics of abortion, racism, adoption, marriage to the issues that were controversial on campus like supervised study time and lock-up time, everyone had their own opinion. Similarly, everyone had their own value systems and moral codes and it was very interesting to see how their ones matched up to mine. There were instances where I adopted a few of theirs and there were others where I felt mine were � ne the way they were.

The last two years were not com-pletely rosy. There were some horrible experiences. Rather than doing the IB programme, the IB programme was do-ing me! Several moments made me feel like I was just not going to make it. But I did, and I think I did fairly well.

There were occasions when life

taught me quite a few lessons. This came from experiences while doing commu-nity service projects, watching friends who were homesick, relatives passing away while I was not in the country, etc.

At one point, a few of us went to Mozambique for holidays and soon I almost ran out of money. There was no father to help me out, and no relatives nearby either. This was my � rst time living in a di� erent country from my parents. In fact, I was living in a di� er-ent hemisphere! I spent the last bit of my money at a rundown café. I could see � ies and mosquitoes � ying around in the kitchen and trust me the burger I ordered did not look much better.

Upon re� ection, I realised just how much of an ATM machine my dad is to me. I love my dad, but I never really realised the value of money until that point; I used to ask him for money as if I was asking for something that was readily available.

I have always budgeted better after this experience. However, I believe that the most important lesson that Water-ford has taught me is that – no matter how di� erent people are and no matter how di� erent the worlds they come from may be people can become the best of friends.

For me this was emphasised when an Israeli and an Iranian became great

friends. They saw themselves as indi-viduals and the con� ict between Israel and the Muslim world did not matter as much. In my opinion, this makes the utopian idea of world peace achievable.

This is one of the beauties of a UWC experience. The romantic idea of world peace that most people say is unachiev-able suddenly does not seem that lofty anymore. The other beauty of it is that there is no one “UWC experience.”

Individuals have their own story to tell after these two years. I know for a fact that my best friend’s one is very di� erent from the one that I am sharing with you.

As I sat in the terminal at Swazi-land for the last time I realised that the last two years were not just about the grades. Sure, the education I received was world class, but perhaps the fact that I had received a � avour of the world from the multicultural student body and teaching sta� was equally important.

I know for a fact that I left Waterford as a better human being and in essence, that is what the UWC logo and Water-ford’s Phoenix emblem are all about. As I came to this realisation, a bolt of lightning tore through the sky. I smiled and took out my boarding pass. It was just as awe-inspiring as it was the � rst time I saw it. l

Doing the ‘money-talk’ rightn Ahsan Sajid

Negotiating your salary is the � rst “task” that you will be doing at the job you are about to embark on, and as far as tasks go this is an extremely tricky one for veterans as much as it is for fresh grad-uates. There are a number of aspects to watch out for, such as maintaining the right attitude, not making promises that cannot be kept or not getting emotional.

While negotiating salary is not easy work for any individual, following are a few tips to do it in a sophisticated and professional manner.

Be con� dent: The good thing about an employer-employee relationship, unlike other relationships, is that there is a contract and both parties arrive at a mutually agreed upon expectation from one another. There is no reason to be shy as many people are wont to be when it comes to talking about money. A crafty employer might just use your shyness to lowball you.

Thinking it is too rude, demanding or belittling to talk about money will be the most expensive mistake you make. While most of us do not enjoy engaging in the “money-talk,” it is best to be � rm and courteous and negotiate the number.

Re-check the breakdown: It is com-mon to focus on your consolidated sal-ary instead of heeding the breakdown, which often lets numerous HR sleight of hand tricks � y under your radar. There are a number of questions to ask both yourself and your employer.

What is your base pay? Are the bo-nuses discretionary or guaranteed? Who exactly decides whether you deserve performance bonuses? Is your festival bonus’ percentage based on your base or your consolidated salary?

Do not be the � rst to name a number: Any halfway decent negotiator will most de� nitely try to get you to name a num-ber � rst. “What do you expect to earn?” is a simple but extremely high-pressure question to answer, and it is easy to give in to the pressure and fumble. If you really want the job, you will probably end up naming a � gure lower than you are seeking.

Nevertheless, when you really have to answer the question, it is best to an-swer it with another question: “What is the budget allocated for this position?”

Ask for more than the number you will go for: A number can always be negotiated down, but never up. Do not be afraid to name a � gure that is too high (which remaining realistic, of course). The numbers talk happens at the end of a drawn out interview period, so you need not be afraid that you will name a � gure so high the interview will immediately be terminated.

When you must name a number, if you stay within realistic bounds and still ask for a higher than expected number, you will enter a negotiation. By negotiat-ing down bit by bit to the number both parties can work with, your employer will also feel like they are winning the negotiation.

Do not be stubborn: Sometimes the best way to negotiate is to be � exible and let certain things that do not really mean that much to you go. A lot of peo-ple enter a negotiation with their mind completely made up, trying to derive every morsel they can get. If you are rude, uncompromising and di� cult, you may feel like you won the negotiation but you will be entering a new relation-ship on the wrong foot. A negotiation should leave all parties pleased with the outc ome. l

Itmum Momin with fellow UWC friends at Waterford Kamhlaba in Swaziland in Southern Africa COURTESY

I know for a fact that I left Waterford as a better human being and in essence, that is what the UWC logo and Waterford’s Phoenix emblem are all about

‘You don’t have to necessarily be a degree holder in accounting. What is more important is the ambition and the discipline’

BIGSTOCK

Sunday, February 16, 2014DHAKA TRIBUNE InternationalDHAKA TRIBUNE8

18 Iraq soldiers, police die in attacks and clashesn AFP, Tikrit

Eighteen Iraqi soldiers and police have been killed in targeted attacks and clashes, o� cials and doctors said Sat-urday, as the country struggles to con-tain its worst violence in years.

Meanwhile, militants Saturday held part of the northern town of Sulaiman Bek, after security forces withdrew despite reportedly making gains in a battle for control of the area the day before.

Most of the casualties occurred overnight.

In the city of Tikrit, north of the cap-ital, gunmen lured a police colonel out of his house, shot him dead, and � ed the area.

And militants shot dead four sol-diers and wounded three who were driving in a civilian vehicle on the main highway in the area.

In Sulaiman Bek, a police captain was stopped by militants and shot dead on his way to pick up relatives in the town and evacuate them to safety.

In the Jurf al-Sakhr areas south of Baghdad, � ve soldiers died in clashes with militants.

And a bomb killed � ve police guarding a pipeline in Baiji, north of the capital.

On Saturday, meanwhile, gunmen killed a policeman and a soldier in sep-arate attacks in the Sharqat area, also north of Baghdad.

The security forces, who su� er from often-lacking training and discipline,

are the target of near-daily attacks by anti-government militants.

Gunmen initially seized part of Sulaiman Bek and nearby areas in Salaheddin province Thursday, but o� cials said security forces regained ground there in heavy � ghting the following day.

Local o� cial Talib al-Bayati told AFP security forces had succeed-ed in retaking militant-held areas on Friday, but then withdrew for unknown reasons.

On Saturday, gunmen were in con-trol of the town’s Al-Askari neighbour-hood, he said.

Sulaiman Bek has been hit by nu-merous attacks over the past year, and was brie� y seized by militants in late April.

In July, 150 militants struck with mortar rounds, rocket-propelled gre-nades and automatic weapons, and ex-ecuted 14 Shiite Muslim truck drivers on a nearby highway.

Violence in Iraq has reached a level not seen since 2008, when the country was just emerging from a period of bru-tal sectarian killings.

Another 22 people died in attacks and clashes earlier on Friday.

Foreign leaders have urged the Shiite-led government to do more to reach out to the disa� ected Sunni Arab minority to undercut support for militants.

But Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki has taken a hard line ahead of a general election scheduled for April. l

Barroso tells UK: Don’t turn your back on Europen Reuters, London

European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso told Britain on Friday to engage with the European Union rather than turn its back on it, saying London should � ght to try to change the things it doesn’t like.

Prime Minister David Cameron has promised to try to renegotiate Britain’s ties with the 28-nation bloc if re-elect-ed next year and to o� er Britons an in/out referendum on EU membership by late 2017.

Barroso was visiting Britain ahead of European elections in May in which the anti-EU UK Independence Party (UKIP) is expected to do well and at a time when opinion polls show a slim majority of Britons would vote to leave the EU.

“The right thing to do is not to turn away but to engage and see what we together can do to make it better,” Bar-roso said in a speech at the London School of Economics. “If you don’t like Europe as it is, improve it.”

Barroso ruled out any attempt to change the EU’s rules on freedom of movement, something Cameron has said he’d like to do to stop the citizens of new EU member states from tapping Britain’s welfare bene� ts.

Barroso, who is stepping down after a decade at the helm of the EU execu-tive, said such attempts would be like shooting Europe in the foot.

“An internal market needs all these freedoms, if not we are shooting our-selves in our feet,” he said. “We cannot have a single market without the free movement of European citizens.”

By underscoring the importance of free movement at a speech in the British capital, Barroso was seeking to send Cameron a message on freedom of movement.

“It was a message that we are not going to compromise on the principle of free movement - this is a big thing in relation to David Cameron’s position which seems to be that there has got to be compromise. I would see some divi-sions looming there,” Anthony Giddens, director of the London School of Eco-nomics from 1997 to 2003, told Reuters.

When asked about the euro zone sov-ereign debt crisis, Barroso said: “The ex-istential crisis of the euro is over.”

“When our American partners and friends, including by the way the Ameri-can president, asked at the most di� cult moments, ‘Do you think the Germans will stand by the euro?’ I have always

said to them: ‘I am absolutely sure Ger-many will stand by the euro’,” he said.

Barroso praised Germany for its determined support of the euro, evi-dence, he said, of Berlin’s deep strate-gic allegiance to the European project.

In a question and answer session following his speech, Barroso was asked whetherGermany, which has re-sisted mutualising public debt in the euro zone, would eventually drop its opposition to the idea.

“As to (debt) mutualisation, it is something that Germany will not say no (to) at a later stage,” Barroso said, adding he felt German acceptance of mutualisation would come gradually.

“There is already a principle of mutualisation but it is progressive mutualisation only at the end of the process, when all the countries have their own fund for resolution and not before,” he said.

“So yes, I believe ... � scal union will come at the appropriate time for the members of the euro area ... it will take time,” Barroso said. l

Obama considering new pressure on Assadn Reuters, Rancho Mirage

President Barack Obama said on Friday he is considering new ways to pressure the government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad as he pledged fresh US assistance to Jordan’s King Abdullah, whose country is reeling from the Syrian civil war.

Obama and Abdullah held talks at the Sunnylands retreat, the estate of the late philanthropist Walter Annen-berg, in a desert region of California.

With the Syrian civil war a central focus of their talks, Obama told report-ers with Abdullah seated beside him that he does not expect the con� ict to be resolved any time soon and that “there are going to be some immediate steps that we have to take to help the humanitarian assistance there.”

“There will be some intermediate steps that we can take applying more pressure to the Assad regime and we are going to be continuing to work with all the parties concerned to try to move forward on a diplomatic solution,” Obama said. Obama did not disclose what steps he has under consideration, but Secretary of State John Kerry said earlier while traveling in Asia that a set of new options are under discussion.

“We have been ramping up our sup-port to the moderate opposition and Jordan has its own strong role to play in relationship to the moderate opposi-tion,” said a senior Obama administra-tion o� cial after Obama and Abdullah held two hours of talks.

The o� cial said the two leaders also discussed the rising extremist threat emanating from Syria and what might be done to counter it.

With Jordan under pressure from housing more than 600,000 Syrian war refugees and facing other economic troubles, Obama announced at the out-set of their talks that he intends to pro-

vide the strong US ally with $1 billion in loan guarantees.

In addition, he said Washington will renew a � ve-year agreement that locks in annual aid for Jordan. The current package, which expires at the end of September, has been providing $660 million a year.

Obama did not say what funding level he would urge Congress to back in another � ve-year agreement.

Frustrated that conditions on the ground in Syria remain horrendous, and confounded by Assad’s refusal to engage in serious negotiations about a transition in power, Obama has been signalling a potential shift toward a more aggressive policy.

Senior administration o� cials who briefed reporters about Obama’s talks with Abdullah said all options remain on the table short of putting Ameri-can boots on the ground. Among the long-standing options has been the possibility of arming Syrian rebels. Such a step would only be applied if it would help nudge the process toward a political solution, one o� cial said.

“Helping to improve the position of the Syrian opposition, put pres-sure on the Syrian regime, is certainly part of the overall calculation,” said the o� cial, who spoke on condition of anonymity. l

Turkey passes bill amid brawln AFP, Ankara

Turkey’s parliament passed a bill Sat-urday tightening government control over the judiciary, with lawmakers violently scu� ing over the contest-ed reforms introduced amid a major graft scandal.

Fighting erupted overnight with � sts � ying in the air between ruling party and opposition lawmakers as the bill was debated in a marathon 20-hour sitting.

Ali Ihsan Kokturk, lawmaker from the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), got a bloodied nose in the brawl, while ruling par-ty lawmaker Bayram Ozcelik’s � nger was broken.

The opposition says the reform is a “government manoeuvre” to limit

fallout from a graft probe that has en-snared top allies of Prime Minister Re-cep Tayyip Erdogan.

“The law is an apparent indicator of the ruling Justice and Development Party’s (AKP) attempt to cover the cor-ruption investigation by redesigning the judiciary,” CHP lawmaker Aykan Aydemir told AFP.

Parliament resumed debate of the bill Friday despite an uproar from op-position parties and the international community who warned it threatened the independence of the judiciary in the European Union hopeful country.

The reform package gives the jus-tice ministry greater sway over the Supreme Board of Judges and Prose-cutors (HSYK), an independent body responsible for appointing members of the judiciary. l

Twenty-� ve years after Soviet exit, Taliban says US will meet same faten Reuters, Kabul

The Taliban called on Afghans to expel the United States from Afghanistan on Saturday just as they said Afghan mu-jahideen � ghters had done to Soviet forces 25 years ago to the day.

In a statement issued on the 25th anniversary of the � nal Soviet with-drawal from Afghanistan, a national holiday for Afghans, the Taliban sought to connect the steady departure of US and NATO troops ahead of a year-end deadline to the end of the decade-long Soviet occupation.

“Today America is facing the same fate as the former Soviets and trying to escape from our country,” the Taliban said in a statement emailed to reporters by Qari Yousef Ahmadi, a spokesman for the group.

“The Islamic Emirate of Afghan-istan is calling on its people to deal with today’s invaders the same they did with the yesterday’s invaders,” he said, using the name the Taliban gov-ernment used during its repressive 1996-2001 rule.

In line with the so-called Geneva ac-cords, a last convoy of Soviet soldiers crossed a bridge connecting north-ern Afghanistan with the then-Soviet Union on February 15, 1989.

“We want to remind the Americans that we did not accept invaders with their sweet and nice slogans in the past. We eliminated them from the world map. God willing, your destiny will be the same,” the statement said.

While US and NATO forces in recent years have pushed Taliban militants out of many areas of their southern homeland, they appear to be dug in across remote areas along the rugged Afghanistan-Pakistan border and in-surgent violence continues. l

Syria second round peace talks end in deadlock

n Agencies

Syria’s government and opposition have agreed on an agenda for a third round of peace talks in Geneva, despite disappointment at the little progress achieved as the second round came to an end.

No date was set for the negotiations to resume, and dispute overshadowed the potential talks as the two sides de-bated the order in which the agenda’s four topics will be discussed: combat-ing violence, transitional government, national institutions and national rec-onciliation.

UN mediator Lakhdar Brahimi pro-posed devoting the first day to a dis-cussion of violence and “terrorism,” and the second to the issue of a tran-

sitional governing body.“I apologise to the Syrian people ... I

apologise to them that in these two rounds we haven’t helped them very much,” Brahimi said.

He urged both sides to “re� ect” and return ready to make progress in the anticipated third round.

“A third round without talking about transition would be a waste of time,” opposition spokesman Louay Sa� told reporters in Geneva, after the negotiations ended in failure.

Al Jazeera’s James Bays, reporting from Geneva, said the government del-egation and opposition spoke for less than 30 minutes before talks ended on Saturday.

“It was a short, tense session, domi-nated by di� erences over how to tackle

the issues of violence and political tran-sition,” opposition negotiator Ahmad Jakal told the Reuters news agency.

A Syrian activist group, meanwhile, said the death toll in Syria’s three-year-old civil war has reached 140,000.

The Britain-based Syrian Obser-vatory for Human Rights said on Saturday that the dead include ci-vilians, rebels, members of the mili-tary, pro-government militiamen and foreign � ghters.

The group bases its count on a net-work of informants on the ground.

The UN’s human-rights o� ce, how-ever, has stopped updating the death toll from Syria’s civil war, saying it can no longer verify the sources of infor-mation that led to its last count of at least 100,000 last summer. l

A man works on a sculpture made of oranges and lemons on February 14, in Menton on the French Riviera, ahead of the start of the ‘Fete du Citron’ (Lemon carnival). The theme of this 81st edition, running from February 15 until March 5, is ‘20 000 lieues sous les mers’ (Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea) AFP

A Syrian activist group says the death toll in Syria’s three-year-old civil war has reached 140,000 REUTERS

‘An internal market needs all these freedoms, if not we are shooting ourselves in our feet. We cannot have a single market without the free movement of European citizens’

WHEN LIFE GIVES YOU LEMONS...

‘Helping to improve the position of the Syrian opposition, put pressure on the Syrian regime, is certainly part of the overall calculation’

9Sunday, February 16, 2014DHAKA TRIBUNE International

Government: 11 dead in ‘terrorist attack’ in China’s Xinjiangn AFP, Beijing

A total of 11 people died in an “attack” in China’s Xinjiang region on Fri-day, with eight “terrorists” shot dead by police and three blowing them-selves up, having injured four people, authorities said.

The incident in Aksu prefecture is the latest violence in the restive re-gion home to mostly Muslim ethnic Uighurs.

“Eight terrorists were killed by po-lice and three by their own suicide bomb during a terrorist attack Friday afternoon,” the Xinhua o� cial news agency said, citing police.

Riding motorbikes and cars carrying LNG cylinders, the group approached police o� cers near a park in Wushi

county as they prepared to go on pa-trol, it said.

The Tianshan web portal, which is run by the Xinjiang government, said that the 11 attackers were killed, while two police and two passersby were in-jured and one assailant detained. Pho-tos posted on the site showed a charred police van and jeep.

Xinjiang police and information o� cers reached by phone declined to comment to AFP. Wushi govern-ment and police o� cials could not be reached.

Aksu, in the far west of Xinjiang near the border with Kyrgyzstan, was the scene of triple explosions in late January that killed at least three peo-ple, according to Tianshan. Police shot dead six people soon afterwards.

Xinhua, citing a police investiga-tion, described those blasts as “organ-ised, premeditated terrorist attacks.”

The vast and resource-rich region of Xinjiang has for years been hit by occasional unrest carried out by Ui-ghurs, which rights groups say is driv-en by cultural oppression, intrusive security measures and immigration by Han Chinese.

Authorities routinely attribute such incidents to “terrorists,” and argue that China faces a violent separatist move-ment in the area motivated by religious extremism and linked to foreign terror-ist groups.

“Terrorist attacks” totalled 190 in 2012, “increasing by a signi� cant mar-gin from 2011,” Xinhua said, citing re-gional authorities. l

India prosecutors want new charge in French child rape casen AFP, Bangalore

Prosecutors asked an Indian judge Saturday to allow them to bring an additional charge of sodomy against a French consular o� cial who has been accused of raping his three-year-old daughter.

Special public prosecutor B.T. Ven-katesh said that the judge Shubha Gowdar had admitted his application to bring the additional charge against Pascal Mazurier during a brief hearing in the southern city of Bangalore as there was prima facie evidence of him committing sodomy.

The judge had then told Mazurier’s defence team to � le any objections to the prosecution’s application at the next hearing of the court which was set for February 24.

The judge is expected to set a trial date once a � nal decision has been made on whether to allow the additional sod-omy charge, the prosecutor added.

Mazurier had on Monday pleaded not guilty to allegations that he raped his daughter in a case that dates back to June 2012.

The 40-year-old was arrested on a complaint � led by his wife and spent four months in jail before being re-leased on bail. Mazurier’s lawyers had argued there was insu� cient evidence against him, but the judge ruled in Jan-uary that there was a prima facie case against him. l

Kerry meets Chinese bloggers squeezed by Internet controlsn AFP, Beijing

Chinese bloggers urged US Secretary of State John Kerry to push for greater freedom online in China during a rare meeting in Beijing Saturday, asking for help to “tear down the great Internet � rewall.”

The roundtable discussion, organ-ised by the US Embassy, was a unique opportunity for the top diplomat to hear directly from China’s bloggers amid reports that Beijing is stepping up its e� orts to clamp down on politi-cal dissent.

The meeting came a day after Kerry held talks with senior Chinese leaders including President Xi Jinping and For-eign Minister Wang Yi, during which he called on Communist Party authorities to improve their human rights record.

Zhang Jialong, a reporter at Tencent Finance who was one of four bloggers taking part in the discussion, urged

the United States to support “Chinese who aspire for freedom” and help “tear down the great Internet � rewall.”

Zhang also accused US companies of helping China block access to social networking sites such as Twitter and the Internet in general.

Kerry said he had not heard of such moves, but promised he would check.

In the 40-minute meeting, Kerry also heard from Ma Xiaolin, a former journalist at Chinese state news agen-cy Xinhua, who said that the Internet was his main form of communication.

He complained about the limits on Internet freedom in China, and urged Washington to use its sway to ease the squeeze.

Kerry told reporters Friday that in his discussions with the Chinese leadership he had a “frank discussion about some human rights challenges... and the free � ow of information in a robust, civil society” which included some of “the challenges of the cyber world that we live in today.”

“I emphasised that respect for hu-man rights and for the exchange of in-formation in a free manner contributes to the strength of a society in a coun-try,” he told reporters after his meet-ings in Beijing.

Chinese microblogs similar to Twit-ter have become key drivers of public opinion in recent years, with bloggers drawing attention to o� cial corrup-tion, pollution and other issues that challenge China’s ruling Communist

Party.The rising in� uence of microblogs

has been accompanied by the emer-gence of celebrity users with veri� ed accounts, known as “Big Vs.”

Wang Keqin, who was � red from his job at the Economic Observer last year after he reported on the cause of � ash � oods that hit Beijing in 2012, said at times he believed he had a price on his head for his work as an investigative reporter.

Internet freedom “was going back-ward, there is less of it,” he told Kerry.

China’s ruling party, which has pro-vided more room for public debate in recent decades, has long been engaged in a “cat and mouse” game with Inter-net users, tightening restrictions in pe-riodic crackdowns before new forums emerge to challenge such restraints.

And the rising popularity of microb-logs such as Sina Weibo has triggered a government-backed campaign to as-sert greater control over social media.

Last year Chinese-American inves-tor Charles Xue, who had more than 12 million followers on his microblog which was heavily critical of the gov-ernment, was arrested on charges of soliciting prostitutes.

State media insisted at the time that his arrest had no connection with his online presence, but government-run broadcaster CCTV showed him in pris-on clothes while under detention, con-fessing that he had used microblogging to “gratify my vanity.” l

Thai protesters to press on with campaignn Reuters, Bangkok

Anti-government protesters vowed on Saturday to maintain their campaign to unseat Thai Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra despite dwindling num-bers on the streets and a � rst tentative move by police against sites they are occupying in Bangkok.

Riot police reclaimed a thoroughfare in the capital’s government district on Friday without resistance, but backed o� from confrontation elsewhere in the city and made no move against the largest protest sites at intersections in the main shopping and business areas.

“Our mission is still going on, which is to reform the country,” Ekkanat Promphan, the protesters’ spokesman, told reporters. “All protest site are still occupied by us and we will still contin-ue our activity during the weekend.”

The protesters view Yingluck as a proxy for her elder brother, Thaksin Shinawatra, a self-exiled former prime minister who clashed with the establish-ment before he was overthrown by the army in 2006. They are demanding that Yingluck makes way for an appointed “people’s council” to overhaul the po-litical system and rid it of the in� uence of Thaksin, a telecoms billionaire they accused of using taxpayer money to buy votes with populist giveaways.

Riot police lined up on Saturday near a protest site at a government complex in north Bangkok, scene of a tense stand-o� on Friday morning, but

made no attempt to move in.National Security Council Chief

Paradorn Pattanathabutr said later that the authorities had called o� the op-eration and were hoping to hold talks with the local protest leader at the site, a Buddhist monk, on Sunday.

“We have already called o� the plan to reclaim the site since there were several factors that could disrupt the operation,” Paradorn told reporters. “Moreover, police who were working at the...site told me that they are trying to persuade the monk to sit down and talk again tomorrow.”

Tarit Pengdith, chief of the Depart-ment of Special Investigation, Thai-land’s equivalent of the FBI, told a news conference that protesters would not be dispersed by force. The protests, which began in November, are the latest round in a bitter eight-year con� ict broadly pitting the Bangkok-based middle-class and royalist establishment against the mostly rural supporters of the Shinawa-tras in the north and northeast.

Haunted by memories of a bloody 2010 crackdown by a previous adminis-tration that killed dozens of pro-Thak-sin “red shirt” activists and anxious to avoid giving the coup-prone military a reason to intervene, the government has largely avoided confrontation.

Despite that, 11 people have been killed and hundreds hurt in sporadic clashes. The past week has been quiet with most protest sites dotted around Bangkok thin-ly attended during the day. l

UN � nds ‘crimes against humanity’ in North Korean Agencies

A UN Commission of Inquiry has found that crimes against humanity have been committed in North Korea and will call for an investigation by the Internation-al Criminal Court (ICC), the Associated Press news agency has reported.

The report, to be released on Mon-day, is the most authoritative account yet of rights violations by North Kore-an authorities, and is bound to infuri-ate its unpredictable leader. But justice remains a distant prospect, not least as North Korea’s ally, China, would be likely to block any referral to the Hague-based ICC.

The commission says it has evidence of an array of crimes, including “exter-mination,” crimes against starving pop-ulations and a widespread campaign of kidnapping in South Korea and Japan.

The conclusions of the year-long inquiry are due to be released on Mon-day but the AP reported it had been made aware of its contents ahead of publication.

The news agency said that an out-line of the report was provided to it by someone familiar with it, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorised to divulge the in-formation before its o� cial release.

A US o� cial, speaking anonymously for the same reason, con� rmed the main conclusions, the news agency reported.

The report refers to murder, en-slavement, torture, imprisonment, rape, forced abortion, sexual violence, forcible transfers and forced disappear-ances, and persecution on political, re-ligious, racial and gender grounds.

It also cites an overall system of po-litical repression - the ‘songbun’ class system - that discriminates against North Koreans on the basis of their fam-ily’s perceived loyalty to the regime.

The UN has not yet con� rmed its accuracy but North Korea’s UN mission has rejected the reported � ndings.

The document, AP says, does not talk in detail of individual responsi-bility but recommends steps towards accountability.

It concludes that the testimony and other information it received, “create reasonable grounds ... to merit a criminal investigation by a competent national or international organ of justice,” AP said.

The commission, the news agency reported, recommended the UN Secu-rity Council refer its � ndings to the In-ternational Criminal Court.

Its publication could pile inter-national pressure on North Korea, whose rights record has drawn less censure at the UN than its nuclear and missile programs.

The secretive country’s hereditary regime, however, has shrugged o� years of continuous outside reproach, including tough UN and US sanctions directed at its weapons programs.

The three-member commission, led by retired Australian judge Michael Kirby, was set up by the UN’s top hu-man rights body in March 2013.

It conducted public hearings with more than 80 victims and other wit-

nesses in Seoul, Tokyo, London and Washington, but was not allowed into North Korea itself.

As well as speaking to defectors, the commission heard from experts about a network of camps, estimated to hold 80,000 to 120,000 political prisoners, and about access to food in a coun-try where many children su� er from malnutrition.

When the UN Human Rights Council authorised the commission to begin its work, North Korea denounced it as po-litically-motivated by “hostile forces” trying to discredit it and dismantle its socialist system. l

Bilawal Bhutto lashes out at the ‘stone-age’ Talibann AFP, Karachi

Bilawal Bhutto Zardari, the son of Pa-kistan’s assassinated premier Benazir Bhutto, on Saturday slammed the Tal-iban for trying to drag the country back to the “stone-age.”

Addressing a gathering during the closing ceremony of a two-week cul-tural festival in his home province of Sindh, Bhutto also urged the country to rise up against the threats.

“The Taliban want to impose the law of terror in the country, but I want to tell them, if you have to live in Paki-stan you will have to follow its consti-tution,” he said.

“We don’t accept the law of terror-ists” he added. “Some people are try-ing to bring back the stone-age era in

the country in the name of Islam.”The start of 2014 has seen a surge in

militant violence with more than 130 people killed.

Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif’s gov-ernment has been under � re from po-litical opponents for failing to mount a strong response to the upsurge in attacks.

The government has for months said it favoured talks with the Taliban but 25-year-old Zardari has spoken in favour of military action against them.

Former premier Benazir Bhutto was assassinated in December 2007 by the Pakistani Taliban after leaving a cam-paign rally of her Pakistan People’s Party.

Her husband and Bilawal’s father Asif Ali Zardari was president from 2008-2013.

The Taliban’s demands include the

nationwide imposition of sharia law and an end to US drone strikes, con-ditions the government and army are unlikely to be able to meet.

“The terrorists should think of the time when the whole nation will stand against them,” Zardari added Saturday in Makli, around 100 kilometres (60 miles) to the north of Karachi.

“We are Muslims and the terrorist groups should not try to teach us Islam.”

Nearly 7,000 people have been killed in the insurgency by the Tehreek-e-Tal-iban Pakistan (TTP) since it began in 2007, according to an AFP tally.

Stability in nuclear-armed Pakistan is seen as important to neighbour-ing Afghanistan, where US-led NATO troops are pulling out after more than a decade of war. l

Rival Koreas agree to tone down hostilitiesn Agencies

North and South Korea have agreed in a rare high-level meeting to stop in-sulting each other and to go ahead with planned reunions of Korean War-divid-ed families next week.

A joint statement released on Friday by the South Korean government and North Korea’s state media announced that Seoul agreed to Pyongyang’s pro-posal that the sides stop vilifying each other, which North Korea has demand-ed over the past weeks in protest of South Korean media reports critical of its leader, Kim Jong-un.

“The North and the South agreed to refrain from slandering each other in order to promote mutual understand-ing and trust,” the statement by North Korean’s state media read. Both coun-tries also agreed to “continue discuss-ing issues of mutual concern.”

The statement comes after senior o� cials from both Koreas met for the second time this week in a border vil-lage of the Korean peninsula.

Seoul says that what  the  North  la-bels as slander, such as a recent report-ing of Kim’s failure to take o�  his shoes during a visit to an orphanage, comes from its media and not its government. South Korea’s lead negotiator pointed out that his government could not put a stop to such media coverage.

“It’s still ambiguous how they can stop mutual insults, but the fact that South Korea agreed to it is meaning-ful,’’ said Lim Eul Chul, a North Korea expert at South Korea’s Kyungnam University. He said top South Korean o� cials are expected to stop mak-ing comments that could provoke North Korea.

For weeks, North Korea has also maintained that scheduled family meetings between the two countries, the � rst in three years, could not take

place at the same time as annual Unit-ed States-South Korean military ex-ercises – slated to begin during next week’s reunion event.

A previous meeting on Wednesday – the countries’ highest-level talks in years – achieved little progress because of North Korea’s demand that  the South  delay the drills’ start until the reunions end, according to South Korean o� cials.

Pyongyang  calls the exercises a re-hearsal for invasion, while Seoul  and the US say they are defensive in nature.

Both countries’ negotiators, how-ever, made concessions to achieve the agreements.

Chief South Korean delegate Kim Kyou-hyun told reporters in Seoul that North Korea withdrew its insistence that the reunions be delayed because of the drills.

“The � rst step towards trust build-ing is the reunions of the separated families, so we persuaded  [the North]that we should trust each other and hold the event as scheduled, and the North Korean side agreed with us,” said Kim Kyou-hyun.

Several thousand Koreans were dis-placed and separated during the 1950-53 Korean War, and since then many across the border have lost contact with each other. l

North Korea has shrugged o� years of continuous outside pressure, including tough UN and US sanctions AFP

‘The North and the South agreed to refrain from slandering each other in order to promote mutual understanding and trust’

Chinese microblogs similar to Twitter have become key drivers of public opinion in recent years

Dhaka’s storied roadsFebruary 9

Rashda/Mina KhanLove this!

WaliulHaqueKhondkerSuch an interesting read! Thanks very much.

Enayet MowlaIt is an interesting piece of history but all I know about this is that hundreds of “Chawks” or “Chawkbazars” can be found in almost every corner of the sub-continent. I have been to some of these “Chawks” myself, in India, Pakistan and of course in Bangladesh. I think a detailed history of the old Dhaka city can be learnt from the research done by Syed Taifoor.

Khaleda Zia, the tragic protagonistFebruary 10

Akhtar ShahShe’s spent up! Great pity. It’s a gross understatement to say “a meaningful , strong and effective opposition is needed for BD.”

Ronnie For starters, Khaleda Zia clearly hasn’t “fallen,” and her “decline” is healthily debatable. So, the rueful ro-manticisation of Khaleda Zia’s plight today as “tragic” appears rather exaggerated to me. Overall, though, I largely endorse the author’s persuasive analysis. He speaks the truth on many of the points of argument he makes here.

However, as di� cult and demoralising the current sit-uation must obviously feel to the BNP chairperson, I don’t believe that she paints a tragic � gure at all, nor that her party’s political predicament is that dreadfully dire or be-yond salvageable. Begum Zia clearly recognises the errors and failures of her party’s ways in their protest campaign against the manifest injustice, immoralities and despot-ism of the then ruling AL government, and of the illegit-imate incumbent regime of that same party, today. And it’s clear that, under the express direction of the chairper-son, a revamp of the BNP, in organisation, recruitment, advocacy, strategic planning etc is underway, in earnest. As one among legions of the party’s supporters, I’m op-timistic about the BNP’s renewal and resurgence. It is

misleading, though, to wrongly ascribe to Begum Zia mo-tives of “revenge” or even “wounded pride” regarding her righteous (albeit � awed) struggle to force the restoration of the non-partisan, caretaker system to oversee national general elections. I can’t vouch the same, though, for an always spiteful Sheikh Hasina and her patented politics of revenge and vitriolic personal attacks.

Also, as much as I’ve always resented and de-nounced the BNP’s needless alliance with the likes of Jamaat and company as an unwarranted, tragic political mistake, I think it’s grossly unfair to merely chastise the BNP for this, and routinely let the AL o� the hook for its own myriad unholy dalliances with religious obscurantists and abject abdication of the ideals of the Liberation War, from 1972-onwards.

It’s entirely fair to say that the failure of the BNP-led opposition’s campaign to thwart the AL’s elec-tion-time machinations have just as much to do with the AL’s unprecedented savage repression of the op-position as with the vile acts of violence and carnage of certain segments of said opposition that some-what alienated public sympathies for the BNP cause. The conclusion that the author states here is clearly something all fair-minded Bangladeshis – cruelly de-nied of their voting rights by the AL – expect and de-mand should happen without delay. It goes without saying that it is their inalienable democratic right.

Price gas properlyThe state owned gas provider, Titas, is due to start a new

drive against illegal connections in its franchise area. It estimates these consume 200m cubic feet of gas per day,

causing daily losses of several hundred crore taka for the govern-ment.

However, the problem of illegal connections is only a symptom of ine� ciency in the country’s gas supplies, it is not the cause.

Gas, like diesel and power, is not priced e� ciently or pru-dently. Ill targeted subsidies and ine� ciencies create perverse incentives which enable and encourage waste and poor service to customers.

An arti� cially low price enables households to waste precious gas supplies by leaving burn-ers on unnecessarily, and this ine� ciency extends throughout the system. The consequences in terms of hardship for businesses and con-sumers are widespread cuts and � uctuations in supplies.

Despite occasional crackdowns, o� cials of Titas, remain alleged to be complicit in enabling new and/or illegal connections them-selves, whilst the company is slow in increasing capacity and infrastructure.

While combating corruption and improving e� ciency may help, the root cause of the sector’s ine� ciency lies in pricing policy.

It does not make sense to subsidise gas or other non-renewable energy sources. This only uses up scarce resources and increases fossil fuel emissions.

Gas must be priced properly to discourage waste and improve e� ciency. Proper pricing is needed to provide the funds needed to modernise supplies and incentivise companies to become e� cient.

It will also stimulate more private investment in renewables and allow taxpayer funds that are currently wasted to be targeted to help consumers in need.

Stop extra-judicial killings

In the past 17 days, three suspects in the murder of Sirajganj unit Awami League leader Saiful Islam have been found killed.

The body of the most recent such victim, a BNP activist, was recovered on Saturday.

These extra-judicial killings of murder suspects must be fully investigated fully so that all perpetrators can be brought to book. We should be able to rely on our criminal justice system to execute justice through the proper legal system.

Criminal elements within a political party or rogue law enforcement o� cers should not be able to engage in such acts with impunity, as is being alleged in this and other cases. As the accused was killed while in police custody, an en-quiry must be conducted into the conduct of all law enforcement o� cers involved.

In 2009, the AL government itself, made a commitment to put an end to all custodial deaths, but this is yet to be achieved. The government and police must deliver better results in stopping extra-judicial killings.

Such incidents damage rule of law and are a stain on our human rights situation. There should be a open and thorough investigation into the killings of these suspects.

Ensuring a proper probe into such cases is necessary to end extra-judicial killings.

Editorial10

www.dhakatribune.com

DHAKA TRIBUNE Sunday, February 16, 2014

LETTER OF THE DAY

CALVIN AND HOBBES

PEANUTS

Letters to the Editor

Khaleda bashes Dhaka city leaders for failureFebruary 11It’s good to know the chairperson is being assertive and decisive in her actions. There’s no alternative to fully revamping the party’s Dhaka city committee. I’m hoping Begum Zia will be able to successfully make a new city committee that is genuinely stronger, more committed, courageous, and far more e� ective in delivering the outcomes that BNP need in executing their re-sistance campaign against the incumbent regime.

Ronnie

Extra-judicial killings damage rule of law. They need open and thorough investigation

Gas must be priced properly to discourage waste and improve e� ciency

Green bankingFebruary 13

Through your esteemed newspaper I would like to bring to the notice of all the concept of “Green bank-ing.” It means promoting environment-friendly practices and reducing your carbon footprint from your banking activities. This comes in many forms. Using online banking instead of branch banking, paying bills online instead of mailing them, opening up CDs and money market accounts at online banks, instead of at large multi-branch banks, or � nding the local bank in your area that is taking the biggest steps to support local green initiatives. Any combination of these personal banking practices can help the environment.

In Bangladesh, Bangladesh Bank has been working on this from 2012. If they can � nish their projects successfully, we will be able to save a huge amount of money every year as there will be many cost e� ec-tive features included in its “Green Banking” concept.

Thanking you,Nahid Hasan, Kaisar Mahmood and Asif Imran Ruben

MBA Program, East West University

Mission HatirjheelFebruary 11

Good initiative, and great news! We are waiting for this game! :D

Delower Hossain

Tamim resigns from vice-captaincyFebruary 9Good. He is not performing well, and he doesn’t seem to correct the mistakes that he made over and over again. An extra burden of vice captaincy would cause even more pressure.

Ahammed Imran Hassan

Crossword

Sudoku

CROSSWORD YESTERDAY’S SOLUTIONS

ACROSS1 Employer (4)5 Useless remains (5)8 Tempt (6)9 Observed (4)10 Old French coin (3)12 Abstract (6)13 Dry in� ammable matter (6)15 Rarely (6)18 Goes by (6)20 Flightless bird (3)21 Grassy expanse (4)23 Turned away (6)24 Undressed kid (5)25 Stains (4)

DOWN1 Infatuate (5)2 United (3)3 Harsh (5)4 Transgression (3)5 Longs for (7)6 Otherwise (4)7 Close (4)11 Norwegian capital (4)12 Merit (7)14 Muslim leader (4)16 Daybook (5)17 Repairs (5)18 Church seating (4)19 Certain (4)21 Was ahead (3)22 Tiny (3)

How to solve Sudoku:Fill in the blank spaces with the numbers 1 – 9. Every row, column and 3 x 3 box must contain all nine digits with no num-ber repeating.

SUDOKU

Be HeardWrite to us at: Dhaka Tribune

FR Tower, 8/C PanthapathSukrabad, Dhaka-1207

Email us at: letters@dhakatribune.comSend us your Op-Ed articles:opinion@dhakatribune.com

Visit our website: www.dhakatribune.comCome join our Facebook community:

https://www.facebook.com/DhakaTribune

n Esam Sohail

One of the more profound laments of anguish I heard from a South Asian expatriate was the pithy observation that “how can

we move forward when our language, perhaps uniquely of all, uses the same colloquial word for ‘yesterday’ and ‘tomorrow’?”

That word kalke denotes both the day past and the day to come in reg-ular Bengali, albeit the su� xes gata- and agami- are appended for more accuracy in the formal language. This unheralded quirkiness of our language does provide a glimpse of a culture that is rich and elaborate but hopeless-ly anchored in an idealised past while � ghting battles that have but limited relevance in the new century. 

Outside of the purists of culture and religion, most observers will � nd it silly that so much of our national energy is spent on endless seminars about what happened 1,400 years ago or 40 years ago, with all such seminars invariably reaching the same conclu-sion: The sorry state of a� airs is the fault of the Pakistanis, the British, the Mughals, the Greeks … and so on and so forth.

Compare Bangladesh to none other than Asian giants like Japan and Korea – both literally demolished to the

ground in international wars, and you see a trajectory of development that is breathtakingly di� erent.

In both the cases of Korea and Japan, within a period of four decades after their respective dénouements, powerful economies and pluralist democracies emerged slowly, steadily, but surely. Does that mean that those two societies, even more ancient than ours, did not value their heritage or culture?

On the contrary, they decided that a real celebration of their past glory was to build a grand future. So, while we were debating who declared independ-ence and what the length of a pious man’s beard should be, Korea was graduating into building top-notch cars and Japan was becoming the world’s top economy. To a lesser extent, that has also been the story of Singapore, Malaysia, and the Philippines.

Future-looking would have meant celebrating the past without losing sight of the future, preserving the richness of Bengali without destroying the English language ability of two generations of people, and crafting a pluralist democracy without obsessing about whose long deceased father was a Razakar or Mmurtad.

Taking the future in both hands would have signaled a cold stop to the national pastime of blaming the

bogey of colonialism and imperialism for every ill of society and, instead, focusing on our own drastic shortcomings.

Ask yourself a simple question. For all the cultural programs and seminars on Amar Ekushey decade after decade, could the Bengali language have been better served if those same resources were poured into creating a top notch translation software for science and

technology journals which are invaria-bly written in English? Or perhaps the resources expended on the fruitless “who declared independence in 1971” question could have been utilised on ful� lling the direct and unambiguous command of the constitution to es-tablish an o� ce of a national ombuds-man? And those are only the most obvious examples.

Resting on an idealised remem-brance of the past, or endlessly � ghting the irrelevant battles of yester-years, is emotionally satisfying and gives many an intellectual a sense of utility at a pompously titled seminar or symposium.

Beyond that, such activities simply take away the � nite resources – materi-al and emotional – of a people to move forward. A great British statesman said it well that if we spend the present bickering over the past, we will invari-ably lose the future.

The world is moving into the agami-kaal; we cannot a� ord to get stuck in the gata-kaal, no matter how wonderful it makes us feel. It is a hypercompetitive globe. You do not get a medal for having a glorious culture, a beautiful religion, or a rich past. Re-sults matter, remembrances don’t. l

Esam Sohail is an educational research analyst and college lecturer of social sciences. He writes from Kansas, USA.

11Op-Ed Sunday, February 16, 2014DHAKA TRIBUNE

n Muhammad Eusha

For the past few months, the Dhaka Tribune has been pub-lishing articles promoting a very

di� erent version of Islam, far di� erent from the traditional image that has been around for 1,500 years. I believe the � rst was the absolutely ludicrous article about how people who do not even believe in Allah can also be regarded as shaheeds according to Islamic principles.

The writer of the article would have su� ered much had he written this for a Bengali newspaper. However, he was shrewd enough to know that English newspapers in Bangladesh are usually read only by tolerant intellectuals who have greater digestive powers, and therefore the probability of problems surfacing was little.

Later we saw an article, from the same author, on how Islam probably does not condone polygamy. And then came another piece from yet another writer who claimed that feminism and Islam have but nothing incongruent in-between them.

I wonder what is coming next! I can suggest a few titles myself! How about: “Does Islam really dislike homosexu-ality?” or “Is drinking really forbidden in Islam?” Who cares about what Imam Ghazzali thinks, or Imam Bukhari, or the millions of scholars who have ex-pounded Islam for the past 1,500 years?

There seems to have emerged a per-verse movement to prove that Islam does not confront the mainstream phi-losophies of life in the Occident. How is it done though? It is done through fabricating false explanations and mentioning only the supporting exam-ples hiding the contradictory ones.

I would like to state here one of many possible examples of deliberate or inadvertent e� orts to misconstrue verses from the Qur’an by one writer in his “Must Islam and feminism contradict?” (Dhaka Tribune, February 15). In asserting that Islam supports the supposed equality of the sexes, the following famous verse (Chapter 16, verse 97) is used: “Anyone who works righteousness, male or female, while believing, we will surely grant them a happy life in this world, and we will

surely pay them their full recom-pense.”

The problem is, there seems to be a peculiar inability to comprehend the fact that the equality stated in this verse is in terms of the reward, and not in terms of social roles assigned to men and women. In fact such a provincial analysis of Qur’anic verses is becoming common these days, pro-ducing very sophomoric conclusions and thoughts.

Islam very conspicuously distin-guishes between men and women, and their respective roles in society. As I pointed out in one of my arti-cles for the Dhaka Tribune (“Gender equality and Islam”), the very concept of equality of sexes does not exist in Islam simply because they are not equal in terms of capacity, specialisa-tion, mental, physical, psychological tendencies, and social and familial roles, just as a shirt and a pairs of pants are not comparable.

There are completely unequivocal statements about the inequality of the sexes and their di� erences both in the Hadith and the Qur’an, on the other hand. I must abstain from listing them here, since the essay would become too long, but any interested reader is welcome to contact me for a compre-hensive analysis.

All Islamic principles are derived from a set of fundamental beliefs. The � rst is absolute monotheism, the second is the transience of the mate-rial world, the third is accountability for actions, and the fourth is spiritual puri� cation.

All Islamic regulations respect these. The segregation of sexes is only to en-sure spiritual puri� cation, for example. As a practicing Muslim, I am enraged at people being so frivolous and experi-menting with Islam as if it were a toy at the hands of so-called intellectuals.

I am used to confronting open vili� -cation of Islam from straightforward enemies, but not such covert and sly attacks which are but machinations to promote a completely false image of the glorious religion. I sincerely request all such intellectuals to stop disseminating lies about Islam. l

Muhammad Eusha is an HVAC specialist and a DT columnist.

n Imran Jamal

Politics is about making choic-es. Making choices does not necessitate choosing sides but

choosing ideas and ideals. It is about compromise and being constructive. About being partisan on issues but not dogmatic to a party or a narrative. Why must we choose sides if neither of the big parties, nor the myriad of the smaller ones, represent our ideals, interests, or elicit our sympathy?

In an article published by this paper some time ago, there was a call for people to essentially ascribe blame for the recent violence and turmoil to the BNP and Jamaat and exonerate the ruling party of blame – to a greater degree – because they were on the “winning side.”

It is this sort of hyper-nationalism that is perhaps the root of the problem in many ways. It posits an “us or them” narrative, which resonates very well

to the terror theme that has been de-veloped in an attempt to stir feelings of righteous indignation by providing partial facts.

The casual relation that ties A with B, BNP and terrorism, is dangerous and pretty weak. Dangerous because it tries to drum up a moral case to sup-port one party over the other – some-thing done repeatedly in that article – and condemns the reader for making an immoral choice if it does not confer with the author’s point of view.

Would a case of highlighting the weakness of the government on issues of law and order not have been more apt? Weak, well like all neo-con fear-mongering evoked by the repeat-ed use of terror without a systemic or rigorous, but lazy, analysis.

It is the cheap, crass ploy to divide that is the problem with politics, creating a partisan politics that has no space for healing but based on hollow rhetoric entwined with morality of the nationalist-fascist bend.

Terror, terrorism, and terrorists are useful words to hide behind when one wishes to project a sense of urgency, the need for unity when public opin-ion is low and the need to polarise, demonise is high.

The violence currently conducted by all sides – including state actors and sanctioned groups – is abhorrent and needs to be condemned. Attacks on civilians are never justi� ed. They are violent, criminal acts whose perpetra-tors need to be brought to justice.

It is the crude understanding of pol-

itics as a zero-sum game that has put us in the situation we are in today. It is the cheap nationalist feelings stirred up to be manipulated by all sides that has led to such entrenched positions. Instead of choosing sides, why not choose ideals?

Togetherness, forgiveness, and honesty? Maybe that is too idealistic but something with the emphasis on being inclusive and not beating down the ever popular, and easy “us and them” rhetoric would be helpful, useful in such a situation. It is easy to divide, perhaps far too easy, but inclusiveness is what is missing and needed.

Such a call, of course, could not exist in the narrative that says Jamaat and, by association, the BNP and their followers are “terrorists” to whom we cannot be held “hostage.” In that equation, would the AL not also be ter-rorists for their joint anti-government programs in the mid-90s?

Less people died during that period – to their credit – but to claim that those were “pro-poor” would be a stretch. Pro-democracy, yes, but like these, they were neither free nor fair.

Those of us who refuse to take sides in this ongoing saga are – or at least I am – not able to identify with the narratives propagated by either side. Maybe it is that we choose not to take sides as the way you would have us; a bland monochrome where for the sake of being partisan we let go of the greys (the complex and complicated history and facts) and join a party.

Sorry, but that is not going to hap-pen, not because I will join the BNP or Jamaat. Being neutral is not the same as not choosing, it means that I do not wish to hoist a banner of blades of rice, a boat, or whatever the JaPa or Jamaat insignia is.

Instead, I’d like to see a politics based on basic ideas of justice – for all and not just the victor. A politics based on egal-itarian values of respect, and equality regardless of wealth, and political and social connections. A politics where the dogmatism, if it must remain, is to uphold the value of human life, digni-ty, and rights. Above all a politics based on unity and dialogue.

Any government that comes into power – wherever – is not only ruling over their cadres and supporters. Their duty is towards the “jonogon,” a word that is being misused in the public arena to such an extent that it holds almost no meaning. It is in the interest of their supporters and detractors that governments need to rule, and that is

something that we are yet to see since the democratic transition (sic) of 1991.

Does this sound far too optimistic? Well, why not? Why not start with

outlandish ideals and try to work as close to that as possible? Despite years of gross misconduct and mismanage-ment, the country has managed to ele-vate itself and millions of people from where they were 20 or 30 years ago.

This, along with countless other achievements, is not celebrated in the manner it should be – an all important character is oft missing from such narratives. The people’s tenacity has led to such development regardless of what has been happening in the country. It is their fortitude, persever-ance, and resourcefulness that is left out when it needs to be celebrated and embraced.

For development programs to work, it is not only the management or the planning that is working, but also peo-ple’s reactions to it. They will embrace it and continue along the path of self and communal improvement.

I will keep rejecting all the parties until there is a change in the way business is done. Until the people – all citizens – are protected, given dignity, and their interests are prioritised, not only in rhetoric but through action. This, I believe, can only happen through a new beginning, one where new spaces with fresh voices � ourish, and move Bangladeshi politics into a post-1971 era. l

Imran Jamal is a freelance contributor.

I will not choose

There seems to be a peculiar inability to comprehend that the equality stated is in terms of the reward

Islam very conspicuously distinguishes between men and women, and their respective roles in society

Why must we choose sides if neither of the big parties, nor the myriad of the smaller ones, represent our ideals, interests, or elicit our sympathy?

This unheralded quirkiness of our language provides a glimpse of a culture that is rich and elaborate but hopelessly anchored in an idealised past

Instead of choosing sides, why not choose ideals? Togetherness, forgiveness, and honesty?

Intellectual attacks on Islam

Of yesterdays and tomorrowsIs it a problem that we use the same word for both? BIGSTOCK

EntertainmentDHAKA TRIBUNE Sunday, February 16, 2014 12

Film The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug, Thor: The Dark World, Paci� c Rim in 3D, The Conjuring, The Hunger Games: Catching Fire, Escape PlanTime: 10am – 10pmStar Cineplex, Level 8

Exhibition 3rd Kibria Print Fair

Time: 3pm – 8pmDhaka Art Center (DAC) House-60, Road-7A Dhanmondi R/A

A Life Like that of a Dragon� y By Sanjib DattaTime: 12pm – 8pmBengal Gallery of Fine Arts House 42, Road 16 (New) / 27 (old) Dhanmondi

TODAY IN DHAKA

ONTV

MOVIE 5 :30pm Star MoviesThe Mummy 39:30pm HBOWrath of the Titans

DRAMA 10:30pm SonyMaharana Pratap11:30pm Sony MaxMujhse Dosti Karoge

n Entertainment Desk

As part of Shadhona’s 3 year project Dhrumel, Shadho-na and Manipuri Theatre will stage the premier show of their new dance drama Premamritam at the auditorium of Dance and Music Department of Bangladesh Shilpaka-la Academy at 6:30pm.

Choreography and conceptualisation of the dance dra-ma by Mou Das, Premamritam is based on these songs. In the dance drama, they will showcase both the exquisite songs and the local Manipuri singers and musicians within the dance-production, while also developing a Bangladeshi margam (way - signifying repertoire) for Manipuri dance.

Premamritam, signifying divine love, depicts Lord Krishna’s antics in each of the eight divine divisions of each day – culminating in the duet dance of Krishna and his foremost devotee Radha.

The narrative of the production is based on the col-lective singing of spiritual songs in the eight (ashta), three-hour (prahar) periods into which each day is divid-ed. Preached by Chaitanya Mahapraubhu of Nabadwip Dham, Sankritan is the easiest way of devotion leading to total salvation.

Vaisnava Padavalis, or songs, tell of the love-play, sep-aration, and union between the � ute-playing cowherd Krishna and the cowherds Radha. On an esoteric level, Radha is understood to be the individual soul that pet-

ulantly feels abandoned by God, symbolised by Krishna, who, in turn, loves all souls and is therefore accused of in� delity by Radha. But Radha � nally overcomes her hurt and rejoins her lover in passionate union. Using the huge-ly magnetic power of desire, these bhakti, or devotional classics, describes a pathway to return to Oneness with the Divine.

The production from Shadhona’s 3-year Manipuri Dance Project Dhrumel, in Komolganj of Moulvibazar in Sylhet. Shadhona has initiated Dhrumel based in Komol-ganj (Moulvibazaar, Sylhet), with the support of Manipuri Theatre, to work with Manipuri dance.

As part of Dhrumel, research and documentation of the vibrant treasure-trove of Bangla Vaishnava Padabali songs sung during the rituals and festivals. A vital part of their research and documentation programmme is the showcasing of the music and musicians of Komolganj.

Premamritam is based on these songs. We hope to showcase both the exquisite songs and the local Mani-puri singers and musicians within the dance-production, while also developing a Bangladeshi margam (way - signi-fying repertoire) for Manipuri dance.

They have undertaken research and documentation of the vibrant treasure-trove of Bangla Vaishnava Padabali songs sung during the rituals and festivals. A vital part of our research and documentation programmme is the showcasing of the music and musicians of Komolganj. l

Premamritam premiers today

Joler Gaan celebrates love for mother tonguen Afrose Jahan Chaity

To celebrate the Valentine’s Day, the fusion band Joler Gaan organised a colourful evening titled Amar Sonar Bangla at 6pm at Bakultola.

Joler Gaan started their programme with their popular love song Bokul-Phul. Thousands of audiences were waiting for the moment; when the band started performing the crowd erupted with joy. They were in for a treat as they performed some of their unreleased tracks along with theal-ready popular songs.

The stage was set in such a man-ner that direct interaction with the

fans was possible. Everything starting from the design of the set to lights and projection, was arranged in a manner that made an excellent interaction with audience.

They performed Kagojer Nouka, Andhar Raite Chander Alo, Dure Thaka Megh, Ronger Gaan, Ei Pagoler Bhaloba-sha and also played some instrumen-tals which took the audience to a new level of musical experience. While per-forming, some of the fans climbed onto the stage and enjoyed it with the band. One of them o� ered even gave a rose to Rahul Anand on stage.

Their unreleased track Ghorer Bhi-tor Voy was a bit di� erent than other

songs. It was a Jazz fusion composi-tion. Joler Gaan explained a bit what their lyrics were about before per-forming a song, and it helped the audi-encea lot to connect with them. While performing Tumi Amar PasheBondhu, it seems like the band celebrated their childhood memories on stage.

Near the end of the programme, the band performed Emon Jodi Hoto, Patar Gaan and an encore of Bokul Phul. The concert was an evening well spent for everyone who went to there – families, friends, couples – to cele-brate their love for each other.

The band is planning to release their next album this year. l

Fusion band Joler Gaan performs at Bakultola BAYEZID WAHEED

A scene from dance drama Premamritam

Celebrated actor Afzal Hossain talks about his realisation and personal experience about love on the occasion of Valentine’s Day at Code:Love exhibition at the Bengal Art Lounge. Code:Love is designed to encourage visitors to participate in and connect with the exhibits using smart phones and code scanners. Bengal Art Lounge, Carefountain and a team of collaborators have created the exhibition of encrypted messages and audio-visual installations. In the medium of each work is the message; the codes, sounds and lights are all statements on the commercialisation of romance and the role of technology in human relationships. l

Tahsan and Mithila in Landphoner Dingulite Premn Entertainment Desk

A single-episode play featuring ce-lebrity duo Tahsan and Mithila in the lead roles will air tonight at 9pm on NTV. Written and directed by Ash-faque Nipun, the story is based on the period of early ‘90s when mobile phones were not available.

The play revolves around Kamal and Pushpo who are neighbours. The youngsters are deeply in love but their families are against it and don’t often get the chance to see each oth-er. Hence they greatly depent on their landphones to communicate. At one point, Pushpo’s family starts forcing her to marry another guy. Since Ka-mal was unemployed, Pushpo fails to convince her family. The conse-quence of the two lovers is revealed at the end of the play. l

Super model Mehazabien (left), also the brand ambassador of Lux Sandal and Cream, visits an university campus to celebrate Pohela Phalgun as part of the brand’s campaign

Two-day Sultan Utsab endsin Narail

n Our Correspondent, Narail

A two-day Sultan Utsab in celebration of the 89th birth anniversary of inter-nationally acclaimed late Bangladeshi artist SM Sultan was concluded at dis-trict Shilpakala Academy premises in Narail on Saturday. Di� erent cultural groups in association with BSA, Sultan Foundation and district administration have organised the festival.

A series of colourful events like art exhibition, art competition, boat trip with children on Chitra river, acrobatic performance, music and dance perfor-mances marked the event.

Sultan, a legendary artist, won Ekushey Padak in 1982, Bangladesh Charu Shilpi Sangsad Award in 1986 and Swadhinata Padak in 1993. He was declared the Man of Asia in 1982 by Cambridge University and Bangladeh government declared him as resident of artist in 1984. Sultan died in Jessore on 10 October, 1994. He was buried at the yard of his own house of the Ma-sumdia village in Narail. l

Karma Co� ee celebrates relationships n Shadma Malik

To mark Valentine’s Day, a romantic comedy Karma Co� ee was staged at Red Shift Co� ee Lounge on February 14. Written by Shazia Omar and direct-ed by Amit Ashraf, the play o� ered two hours of laughter for the audience.

The play depicts the story of a young man named Ansari (Zach Imtiaz Kibria) on his search for a soulmate. In a single afternoon, his sister Samiya (Rumana Habib) sets up four blind dates for him, trying to get him to tie the knot.

For his � rst date, the happy-go-lucky, but not very ambitious Ansari, meets Ruby (Nissim Jan Sajid), an in-vestment banker. A capitalist to the core, Ruby makes him feel like he has no drive in his life, which makes Ansari think about his own wasted potential.

Then Ansari meets a girl name Gan-ga (A� a Rashid), a yoga practitioner. On their date, she keeps giving Ansari health tips and advice. Ansari realises he is not taking good care of his health.

Social activist Umbereen (Sheh-zeen Choudhury), who works for Brac, makes Ansari realise that he is making zero contribution to society. Ansari was happy to meet such a noble per-son, on the other hand, he feel that he could be need of the society.

Ansari fails to connect with Nazia (Neda Shakiba), a talented musician, after his friend Imran (David Browne) sweeps in and takes over his date. But all is fair in love and war, as he and the girl end up in a serious relationship.

In between these blind dates, An-sari meets an enigmatic girl named

Omi (Ulfath Kuddus). Omi and Ansari spend time together and � nd common ground.

Searching for unprecedented of the power of the saint love.

Additionally, with his funny laugh and broken English, the waiter Babu (Baizid Joarder) brought much hu-mour to his character. And the care and love of Yasmeen Aunty (Neeta Mannaf) for the people in her café dominated the scene.

Meanwhile, Samiya and her hus-band Javed’s (Mashur Rahman) por-trayal of the strong relationship of their marriage supported Ansari’s quest.

The play was a tingly comedic

study of human nature, talking about celebrating relationships and emo-tions, and searching for oneself by un-derstanding others.

The title Karma Co� ee is about how good deeds contribute to good karma and future happiness, while bad in-tentions and bad deeds contribute to bad karma and future su� ering.

The play closed on an upbeat note when Nazia played two songs, Let It Be and Fools Rush In, for the jam-packed audience. The story turned in hilarious manner, while the dialogue featured sarcasm and humor. The actors’ performances were applause-worthy. l

A scene from Karma Co� ee

n Entertainment Desk

Filmmaker Mani Ratnam’s who has already roped Aishwarya Rai Bachchan, who is making a comeback after a long maternity leave with this � lm, Shruti Haasan has also been signed. For the third heroine, the � lmmaker wanted the R...Rajkumar actor Sonakshi to play the third heroine in his forthcoming Tamil-Telugu bilingual. But according to a source, the actor has refused the o� er.

Ratnam met Shatrughan Sinha, who

is a friend of the director, and outlined the role he had in mind for his daughter, before discussing it with Sonakshi.

The Times of India quoted a source saying, “She loved the role and it was really tough for her to let go of the of-fer. But she had prior commitments and didn’t have the required dates. But she will de� nitely work with Mani Sir in the future.”

This is the second � lm Sonakshi has refused in the last month. A few days ago, she turned down Subhash Ghai’s � lm on Sarabjit Singh. l

Sonakshi Sinha turns down Mani Ratnam’s � lm

Afghanistan Under-19s inningsUsman Ghani run out (Mosaddek) 27Mujtaba b Mosaddek 47Ihsanullah c Joyraz b Abu Haider 13Hashmatullah b Mosaddek Hossain 43Younas † c Musta� zur b Mosaddek 1Nasir Ahmadzai* run out (†Litton) 41Waheedullah run out (Mosaddek) 6Sharafuddin c Joyraz b Rahatul 0Muslim Musa c Shadman b Rahatul 12Abdullah Adil run out (†Litton Das) 4Sayed Shirzad not out 10Extras (lb 4, w 4) 8

Total (all out; 50 overs) 212

BowlingMusta� zur Rahman 9-0-42-0, Abu Haider 6-0-41-1 (1w), Mehedy Hasan 8-1-37-0 (1w), Rahatul Ferdous 7-0-38-2 (1w), Nihaduzzaman 10-1-31-0 (1w), Mosaddek Hossain 10-1-19-3

Bangladesh Under-19s inningsShadman Islam not out 126Joyraz Sheik not out 81Extras (lb 1, w 7, nb 1) 9

Total (0 wickets; 42.3 overs) 216

BowlingAbdullah Adil 9-1-50-0 (1nb, 1w), Sayed Shirzad 9-0-59-0 (3w), Muslim Musa 4.3-0-26-0, Sharafuddin Ashraf 10-0-32-0, Mohammad Mujtaba 8-0-34-0 (1w), Hashmatullah Shaidi 2-0-14-0 (1w)

SCORECARD

13DHAKA TRIBUNESunday, February 16, 2014

SportDid you know?

Sk Jamal forward Sony Norde carries

training DVDs of Beckham and

Ronaldinho in his backpack

14 Maradona appeals to EU over tax bill

15 Top seeds Potro, Murray tumble by same scorelineDAYS TO GO

0 2 8

Sylhet bag easy win, Metro on course

Sylhet bagged their � rst win of the National Cricket League season beat-ing Dhaka division by nine wickets inside three days at Khulna’s Sheikh Abu Naser Stadium yesterday. Dhaka Metropolis were comfortably placed against Barisal with a lead of 257 runs at stumps of the third day.

Meanwhile the days play in the other two matches of the third round - Chittagong versus Khulna and Rajshahi versus Rangpur – did not roll on the � eld due to drizzle and overcast condi-tions. 

Dhaka division v SylhetDhaka resumed the day on 111 for three in their second innings and reached 269 before getting bowled out in front of some controlled spin bowling from Abu Jayed and Nasum Ahmed. Jayed and Ahmed claimed four wickets each. Sylhet was set a target of 13 runs

to win which they achieved in three and a half overs.

 Barisal v Dhaka MetroAt Fatullah’s Khan Shaheb Osman Ali Stadium’s outer ground, Barisal were cruising along with a superb third wicket partnership between opener Fazle Rabbi and Iftekhar Nayeem before left-arm spinner Abu Bakkar wrecked through their innings with a � ve-wicket haul. Barisal ended their � rst on 249 for nine. Mohammad Sajib hurt his � nger while � elding and could not bat. Resuming on 109-2, Fazle carried on and scored 121 while Iftekhar made 70 as they added 159 runs together.

Metro, with a massive 400 in their � rst innings, ended the day at 106 for four in their second innings with Mar-shal Ayub and Tasamul Haque unbeat-en on 26 and 10 respectively. O� spin-ner Islamul Ahsan picked three wickets for Barisal. l

Mush� q returns, Arafat the new face

Wicketkeeper-batsman Mush� qur Ra-him is fully � t and will resume his job as captain of the Bangladesh team in the three-match ODI series against Sri Lanka starting from tomorrow. Left-arm spinner Arafat Sunny, who was im-pressive in the recent Twenty20s, also made it in the 15-member squad that the Bangladesh Cricket Board (BCB) announced yesterday.

Sunny, grabbing tree wickets in the two T20s, showed excellent tempera-ment and capability to play in the in-ternational arena and he was rewarded a place in the vacant position left by Abdur Razzak. Razzak picked up an injury in his left hamstring during the � rst innings of the second Test against Sri Lanka in Chittagong two weeks ago. 

Anamul Haque, Naeem Islam and fast bowler Sha� ul Islam were also named in the squad.  Sha� ul recovered from a ligament tear in his ankle which he picked up almost four months ago. All-rounder Ziaur Rahman lost his place from the Tigers squad. 

However, Tamim Iqbal once again named as the vice-captain remained the interesting part of BCB’s announce-ment as the opening batsman had re-signed from the job ahead of the T20s last week.

It was reported in the media that be-ing the vice-captain it was natural for Tamim to be named as captain in ab-sence of skipper Mush� q, but instead the board opted for Mashrafe bin Mor-taza which left Tamim furious.

However, BCB cricket operations chairman Akram Khan informed that Tamim’s resignation was not accept-ed by the board while Tamim said he wants to concentrate on his perfor-mance rather than the o� � eld issues.

“I had informed my decision to the board. It was on them to decide on my move. The ODI series is important for us and for me as I haven’t been able to play up to my ability in the previous games,” said Tamim to the Dhaka Tri-bune yesterday.

Starting tomorrow all the matches will be played at the Sher-e-Bangla Na-tional Stadium. The second and third match will be played on February 20 and 22 respectively. l

Young Tigers open WC account in style

Bangladesh rode on a commanding 216-run opening stand between Shadman Islam and Joyraz Sheikh to start their Under-19 World Cup campaign with an emphatic 10-wicket victory over Afghanistan in Abu Dhabi yesterday. After roping the Afghans to 212 runs with an impressive bowling perfor-mance, it was Shadman who registered his career’s � rst century and paved the way for an easy win with over seven overs to spare at Sheikh Zayed Sta-dium . Player of the match Shadman, the dominating o� the two, clobbered

14 fours and a six to remain unbeaten on 126 runs from 142 deliveries. Joyraz at the other end was sensible to assist him with a valuable 81 o� 114 balls. He struck 11 fours.

Their partnership of 216 in 42.3 overs was the second best for Bangla-desh in the Under-19 stage. The best was of 231 runs between Amit Majum-der and Anamul Haque against Zimba-bwe in Bogra in 2009.

Earlier, put in to bat � rst Afghani-stan were o� to a good start with their openers adding 69 but once the part-nership was broken through a run-out by Mosaddek Hossain they young Ti-

gers never looked back. The spinners played the vital role as they tied the run-rate and pressurised the Afghan batters to go for big shots which even-tually cost them their wickets in regu-lar intervals.

O� -spinner Mosaddek was the most successful bowler claiming three for 19 while left-arm spinner Rahatul Fer-dous took two for 38. 8

In the other match of Group B Aus-tralia also registered a 101-run win over Namibia. Meanwhile, India and Scot-land also picked up wins in their re-spective matches against Pakistan and Papua New Guinea. l

Positive attitude the key

A never say die approach squared up with some belligerent batting and courageous bowling took Bangladesh to the verge of the victory in the two-match T20 series against Sri Lanka, the highest ranked team in the shortest version of the game. Though the Ti-gers lost both matches in the � nal ball, many positives could be pulled out from their performances.

The result would have come Bangla-desh’s way had they enjoyed some luck as the last-ball controversy in the � rst T20 will bring the storm back to the tea cups again and again. Whether it was a “no-ball” above the waist height or not, remains debatable but Bangladesh was the su� erer for sure.

Bangladesh paved the way for three debutants - Arafat Sunny and wick-etkeeper Mithun Ali in the � rst match while Sabbir Rahman made his in the second. Sunny, who has been roam-ing through the local cricket arena for about 12 years took two for 17 in the � rst T20 and opened the ball in the second match and chipped away with another victim. His line and length was up to the mark. Mithun Ali, however, did not have nice debut with the bat, but his work behind the wicket was good.

Meanwhile Sabbir Rahman took the � eld in a pressure point with many of big guns already gone. Known for his hard hitting ability the youngster con-

tained himself and his sensible 26 o� 36 must have pleased the selectors.

What were in the minds of the Ban-gladesh batsmen in the second T20 was not known as they were in an attack-ing mode from the word go. The way Anamul Haque and Shakib al Hasan featured was a relish to the eyes and so did the crowd let know with wild cheers.

Maybe the attacking style was a demonstration of the strategy the Ti-gers would wear in the coming World Cup T20 and regular skipper Mush� qur Rahim’s return will just bolster the at-tacking instincts.

The three catches gripped by Farhad Reza, Nasir Hossain and Anamul in the � rst T20 should work as an inspiration in the � eld for a long time. All the three were world class catches and show-cased the improvement in the � elding sector of the Tigers.

Taking the match to the last ball against the world’s top ranked T20 side will be the most notable point o� the two matches. The attacking approach with just 120 to defend in the second match was admirable.

T20 moves too fast and Bangladesh may have lacked the � ne tuning, but with the T20 World Cup knocking at door Bangladesh surely can look forward with con� dence. The recent performance only sends the message that Bangladesh will be a tough nut to crack. l

Amol, Sharda take singles title

Amol Roy clinched the men’s single and doubles title in the 17th MA Jabber Memorial Tennis Tournament at the National Tennis Complex in Ramna. In the men’s singles, Amol crushed Arif

Hossain 6-1, 6-0 in the � nal to lift the title. In the men’s doubles, Amol part-nered with Ranjan Ram to beat Anowar Hossain and Dipu Lal 6-3, 6-1 in the � nal. Sharda Alam lifted the women’s singles title after beating Ishita Afroz 4-6, 7-5, 6-4 in the � nal. l

Mush� qur Rahim (Capt), Tamim Iqbal, Anamul Haque, Shamsur Rahman, Momi-nul Hoque, Shakib al Hasan, Nasir Hossain, Mahmudullah, Sohag Gazi, Arafat Sunny, Mashrafe bin Mortaza, Rubel Hossain, Al-Amin Hossain, Naeem Islam, Sha� ul Islam

SQUAD

Australia, � rst innings, 397

South Africa, � rst innings, 206

Australia, second innings(overnight 288-3)C. Rogers b Steyn 1S. Marsh c De Villiers b Steyn 44M. Clarke not out 17Extras (b3, lb14, w7) 24

Total (4 wkts dec, 72.2 overs) 290

BowlingPhilander 11-2-28-0, Steyn 14.2-2-61-2 (1w), McLaren 11-0-47-0 (1w), Morkel 13-4-38-0, Peterson 19-1-87-1 (5w), Duminy 4-0-12-1

South Africa, second inningsA. Petersen c Haddin b Johnson 1G. Smith c Doolan b Johnson 4H. Amla c Marsh b Harris 35F. du Plessis lbw b Siddle 18A. de Villiers c Clarke b Johnson 48J. Duminy c Doolan b Johnson 10R. McLaren c Haddin b Johnson 6R. Peterson b Siddle 21V. Philander not out 26D. Steyn c Marsh b Harris 3M. Morkel run out (Lyon) 1Extras (b10, lb5, nb1, w11) 27

Total (59.4 overs) 200

Fall of wickets1-6 (Petersen), 2-12 (Smith), 3-49 (Du Plessis), 4-97 (Amla), 5-128 (Duminy), 6-140 (McLaren), 7-151 (De Villiers), 8-165 (Peterson), 9-178 (Steyn)

BowlingHarris 12.4-5-35-2 (1w), Johnson 16-3-59-5 (1nb, 2w), Siddle 16-6-55-2, Warner 2-0-3-0, Lyon 13-1-33-0

ResultAustralia won by 281 runs

SeriesAustralia lead the three-match series 1-0

SCORECARD Johnson bowls Aussies to crushing win

Australian fast bowler Mitchell John-son claimed his career-best match � g-ures as he bowled his team to a crush-ing 281-run win over South Africa on the fourth day of the � rst Test at Super-Sport Park on Saturday.

Johnson followed up his seven for 68 in the � rst innings with � ve for 59 as South Africa were bundled out for 200. As he did in the � rst innings, Johnson took a wicket in his � rst over and dismissed both South African opening batsmen cheaply to leave the hosts struggling.

AB de Villiers, who made 91 in the � rst innings, again provided the only signi� cant resistance to the Johnson-inspired bowling attack, hitting 48 before driving Johnson to short cover where Australian captain Michael Clarke held a stinging catch.

Johnson’s match � gures of 12 for 127 bettered his previous match best of 11 for 159 against South Africa in Perth in 2008/09. It was a match dominated almost entirely by Australia, who thor-oughly outplayed the team currently ranked number one in Test cricket.

Given the performance of John-

son in particular, it will be di� cult for South Africa to come back in the two remaining Test matches.

South Africa have not been beaten in a series since Australia beat them, also in South Africa, in 2008/09.

As he did in the � rst innings, Johnson took a wicket in his � rst over, having Al-viro Petersen caught behind for one. It was Johnson’s 250th Test wicket in his 57th Test match. Clarke declared Austra-lia’s second innings closed at 290 for four after only 3.2 overs when Shaun Marsh was caught behind o� Dale Steyn with-out adding to his overnight score of 44. l

Sharda Alam (2L) receives the women’s singles trophy at National Tennis Complex yesterday COURTESY

Bangladesh U-19’s Shadman Islam (� le photo) scored an unbeaten 126 against Afghanistan in their U-19 World Cup opener in Abu Dhabi yesterday COURTESY

Sylhet v Dhaka DivDhaka (1st innings)100 all out in 39.4 oversSylhet (1st innings)356 all out in 110.3 oversDhaka (2nd innings)269 all out in 85 overs(Rakibul 54, Nasum 4/60, Jayed 4/82)Sylhet (2nd innings)14/1 in 3.3 overs, (Rumman 6*, Nurul 1/3)Sylhet won by nine wickets

Dhaka Metro v BarisalMetro (1st innings)400/ 9 declare in 119.2 oversBarisal (1st innings)249/9 in 102 overs(Rabbi 121, Nayeem 70, Bakker 5/25)Metro (2nd innings)106/4 in 27 overs, (Sunny 31, Marshall 26*, Ahsan 3/22)Dhaka Metro lead by 257 Runs

BRIEF SCORES

Helal blasts late decisions

Anwarul Karim Helal, the mainly ap-pointed manager of the Sheikh Jamal Dhanmondi Club who could not travel with the side due to passport problems, blasted the coach Joseph Afusi for his tac-tical decisions and said it cost them the � -nal of the IFA Shield in Kolkata yesterday.

Helal also informed that the presi-dent of the club Manjur Kader is also furious over the decision. In the ab-sence of Helal, Abdul Ga� ar is carrying the role in Kolkata.

Jamal’s Nigerian coach Afusi replaced their in-form Nigerian striker Emeka Darlington with Alli Amisu in the extra time and the fresh player Alli was among the three missed penalties on the night. Helal believed Emeka should have stayed on as he could have been instru-mental in the shootout. Defenders Dida-rul Haque and Mohammad Linkon were the other two who missed penalties.

“They did a big mistake in changing players. They took away Emeka, they gave Didar to take the tie-breaker who never takes penalty. Mamunul, Sohel Rana, Emeka should have given the chance to take penalty. Even Linkon is not good at penalty,” said Helal to Dha-ka Tribune over phone.

“I’m really sad. If I were there I would never let this happen as a team manag-er. The president is also furious at the manager (Abdul Ga� ar). The game was lost in those decisions,” he added. l

Atletico Madrid go back top

Atletico Madrid moved clear at the top of La Liga, for a few hours at least, as two goals inside the � rst four minutes guided them

to a 3-0 win over Valladolid.Raul Garcia opened the scoring from

a well-worked free-kick after three min-utes before Diego Costa lofted in his 25th goal of the season 60 seconds later. And Diego Godin rounded o� the scoring when he headed home the third 17 min-utes from time. Atletico now lead Bar-celona and Real Madrid by three points.

“The key was the intensity that the players started with. Going 2-0 ahead allowed us to relax and once it went 3-0 even more so,” said Atletico boss Diego Simeone. l

SportDHAKA TRIBUNE Sunday, February 16, 2014 14

New Zealand 1st innings 192K. Williamson 47; I. Sharma 6-51, M. Shami 4-70

India 1st innings (overnight 100-2)S. Dhawan c Watling b Southee 98I. Sharma c Watling b Boult 26V. Kohli c Rutherford b Wagner 38R. Sharma b Neesham 0A. Rahane c Boult b Southee 118M. Dhoni c Watling b Boult 68R. Jadeja c Fulton b Wagner 26Z. Khan c Watling b Wagner 22M. Shami not out 0Extras: (b8, lb4, w7, nb2) 21Total: (all out; 102.4 overs) 438

Fall of wickets1-2, 2-89, 3-141, 4-162, 5-165, 6-228, 7-348, 8-385, 9-423, 10-438BowlingBoult 26-7-99-3 (2w, 1nb), Southee 20-0-93-3, Wagner 22.4-3-106-3 (1nb), Anderson 16-2-66-0 (3w), Neesham 18-2-62-1 (1w)

New Zealand 2nd inningsP. Fulton lbw Khan 1H. Rutherford not out 18K. Williamson not out 4Extras (nb1) 1Total: (one wicket; nine overs) 24

BowlingI. Sharma 3-0-9-0 (1nb), Khan 3-2-7-1, Shami 3-0-8-0

SCORECARD, DAY 2

Fulham hire Magath as Rene sackedFulham took dramatic action Friday in a bid to preserve their Premier League

status by sacking Rene Meulensteen and bringing in Felix Magath as their new manager with just 12 games of the season left. Former Manchester United head coach Meulensteen had been in charge of the Cottagers for little more than two months after being promoted from within the west London club’s backroom sta� to replace fellow-Dutchman Martin Jol on December 1. –AFP

Wenger can splash the cashArsenal chairman Chips Keswick has told Arsene Wenger he is free to splash

the cash in the next transfer window after the Premier League club revealed cash reserves of over £120 million ($200 million, 147 million euros) in their latest � nancial results. The Gunners’ parent company on Friday published � gures cov-ering the six months up to November 30, 2013. Although those results showed there was a group loss before tax of £2.2 million, Arsenal’s sound � nancial foot-ing was clear to see. –AFP

Ramos is going nowhere, say HerthaHertha Berlin on Friday denied rumours that their top-scoring Adrian Ramos had

agreed to join Bundesliga rivals Borussia Dortmund in the summer. “It’s false,” said the sporting director of Hertha, Michael Preetz, ahead of their crucial Bundesliga clash with Wolfsburg at the weekend. A number of reports in the German and inter-national media have claimed in the last few days that the current top scorer in the Bundesliga had agreed a four-year contract with Dortmund to begin in the summer, when Lewandowski will leave the Signal-Iduna Park to join Bayern Munich. –AFP

FIXTURES Catania v Lazio Atalanta v Parma Cagliari v Livorno Genoa v Udinese Juventus v Chievo Sassuolo v Napoli Roma v Sampdoria

Rahane hits ton as India take � rm control

A maiden century to Ajinkya Rahane, inspired by advice from master bats-man Sachin Tendulkar, boosted India to a formidable 246-run � rst innings lead over New Zealand in the Second Test in Wellington on Saturday.

India were all out late in the day for 438 in reply to New Zealand’s 192, with Rahane’s 118 backed by 98 from Shikhar Dhawan and 68 from skipper Mahendra Singh Dhoni.

At stumps, after facing nine overs, New Zealand were 24-1 in their second innings and with three days remaining they face a huge struggle to prevent In-dia drawing the series.

Hamish Rutherford was not out 18 with Kane Williamson on four. Peter Ful-ton went for one, lbw to Zaheer Khan.

The promising Rahane, playing only his � fth Test, was in exquisite form as he drove and pulled the New Zealand seamers in a near chanceless innings on a Basin Reserve wicket which had

lost the venom it held on the � rst day.He said he was inspired by words of

advice from the recently retired Ten-dulkar. He took his chance with a 158-ball knock that included 17 fours and one six before it came to an end with an exceptional catch from Trent Boult, run-ning in from the boundary and diving forward to clasp the ball one-handed.

When India resumed the day at 100-2, New Zealand made heavy weather of re-moving nightwatchman Ishant Sharma.

He was twice sat on his backside while subjected to a barrage of short-pitched deliveries, but still managed to extend his score from an overnight three to 26 before he was caught behind.

Dhawan, a century-maker in the � rst Test, reached 98 when an attempt to drive a seaming Tim Southee delivery gave Watling the second of his � ve catches.

For New Zealand, Southee, Boult and Wagner took three wickets apiece, while debutant Jimmy Neesham bowled Rohit Sharma to claim his maiden Test wicket. l

India Ajinkya Rahane celebrates his � rst Test century against New Zealand on the second day of their second Test in Wellington, New Zealand yesterday AP

Balotelli wonder goal sinks Bologna

A late wonder goal from Mario Balotelli gave AC Milan a 1-0 home win over resilient Bologna in Serie A on Friday.

Balotelli lifted a dreary match with his 10th league goal of the season, an incredible looping long-range strike from near the sideline in the 86th minute moving Milan up to 10th, level on 32 points with ninth-placed Lazio.

Milan are four points behind rivals Inter Milan, who are � fth, with Walter Mazzarri’s side facing a tough trip to Fiorentina on Saturday.

“I saw the keeper was o� his line so I thought I’d try and hit it hard. Luckily for me I struck it well,” said Balotelli.

The Italy striker cried after being substituted in last week’s 3-1 defeat at Napoli and did not celebrate after his incredible winner on Friday.

“There’s a tendency here to look

too much at people’s private lives and I would suggest that we avoid that be-cause I’m an attacker in the national team. Leave me alone to live my life and give my best on the pitch,” said Balotelli.

The defeat was harsh on Davide Bal-lardini’s Bologna who have won only four times in the league all season and recently lost leading forward Alessandro Diamanti to Chinese club Guangzhou.

They remained four points clear of the relegation zone in 16th but on another night might have snatched a shock win with Jonathan Cristaldo unlucky not to score with a smart volley on the hour.

With chances at a premium the most interesting thing to happen in the � rst half came when referee Mauro Ber-gonzi su� ered a bleeding lip after the ball de� ected from a tackle between Riccardo Montolivo and Diego Perez and hit him in the mouth.

Bologna looked dangerous on the break and it took a moment of magic from an otherwise disappointing and

seemingly disinterested Balotelli to grab a third win in � ve league games for new coach Clarence Seedorf.

With a place in next season’s Cham-pions League 15 points away, Milan will hope their local rivals slip up in Flor-ence and that Hellas Verona, who are level on 36 points with Inter, stumble at home to fellow European challeng-ers Torino on Monday.

The win is a boost for Seedorf as he prepares for Wednesday’s home game against Atletico Madrid in the last 16 of the Champions League.

“Atletico do not play the same way as Bologna who defended very deep,” said the Dutchman who also hit out at media reports that suggested he criti-cised Balotelli by saying that he “isn’t a champion”. People like to take what I say out of context. I didn’t say Mario isn’t a champion but that he will be-come a champion,” explained Seedorf.

“I believe in him a great deal and I believe in the man he is becoming.” l

Julio Cesar � nalises Toronto loan

Brazil’s � rst choice goalkeeper Julio Cesar on Friday announced he had � -nalised a loan move to Major League Soccer side Toronto.

“I have signed a loan deal until the end of December,” said the 34-year-old, who has not featured at all this season in England’s second tier Championship with QPR. The veteran revealed the move on his new club’s website and will now look to get match-� t ahead of his planned March 15 debut in Seattle.

“I have not just come here to be able to play in the World Cup but also to discover a league and win,” said the former Inter Milan shot-stopper, who has won 77 Brazilian caps. l

Maradona appeals to EU over tax bill

Diego Maradona announced Friday he has asked the European Union (EU) to step in as arbitrator amid an ongoing feud with the Italian authorities over an alleged 39m euros in unpaid taxes.

Maradona is accused of building up the huge tax bill during a spell playing in Italy where he led Napoli to their only two league titles, at the end of the 1980s and start of the 1990s.

“I’m being persecuted in Italy,” Maradona said Friday as he spoke to media at the Rome o� ces of the EU.

“I’m not a fraudster. I don’t have 40 million euros, I haven’t even earned that much during my career.”

However, Pisani added: “If there’s been a mistake, we’re ready to pay. If

we owe 40 million, we will pay 40 mil-lion.”

According to Rivellini, “the EU will

announce a decision within four to six weeks” an “Diego will go to Brussels for the announcement”. l

PSG coast past Valenciennes

Paris Saint-Germain extended their cushion at the top of France’s Ligue 1

to eight points on Friday after cruising past strug-gling Valenciennes 3-0 at the Parc des Princes.

Ezequiel Lavezzi struck a � rst-half opener for Lau-rent Blanc’s men before

two goals in two second-half minutes, the � rst from Zlatan Ibrahimovic and the second an own-goal by Gary Kugel-macher, saw PSG coast to victory.

The win extended the Parisian club’s unbeaten home run in the league to 25 matches and served as an ideal rehearsal for Tuesday’s trip to Bayer Leverkusen in the last 16 of the Cham-

pions League.“The focus before Leverkusen was

above all to win this match,” re� ected Blanc.

“The players have been thinking about Leverkusen but (tonight) they put it to one side and got the job done.

“We could have been more e� -cient, but to score three goals and not concede any isn’t bad,” added the PSG coach.

Defeat for Valenciennes means Ariel Jacobs’ side remain in the bot-tom three, two points from safety and fourth-from-bottom Evian TG.

Bearing in mind next week’s � rst-leg tie in Germany, Blanc predictably chose to rotate his squad, making � ve changes to the side involved in the stalemate at Monaco last weekend. l

Tributes paid to Finney, ‘Messi of his day’

Football Association chairman Greg Dyke led tributes to late England great Tom Finney on Saturday, saying that the former Preston North End winger would be “forever remembered”.

Finney died at the age of 91 on Fri-day after a life-long attachment to Pres-ton that made him a byword for sport-ing loyalty in Britain. A dashing wide player, he scored 210 goals in 473 ap-pearances for the team from northwest England and later became club presi-dent. He also represented his country on 76 occasions, scoring 30 goals.

“On behalf of the FA, I would like to send my deepest condolences to the family and friends of Sir Tom Finney,” Dyke said in a statement. “He was one of English football’s all-time greats and will be much missed across the game.l

Wenger in spotlight as Arsenal seek revenge

Branded a “specialist in failure” by his Chel-sea counterpart Jose

Mourinho, Arsenal manager Arsene Wenger will hope his side prove other-wise when they host Liverpool in the FA Cup on Sunday.

Chasing a � rst trophy since their 2005 success in the FA Cup, Arsenal will not want for motivation against a Liverpool side who thrashed them 5-1 when the teams met last weekend.

Brendan Rodgers’s side smashed four goals past Wenger’s men inside the opening 20 minutes of their game at An� eld as Arsenal were ruthlessly toppled from the league summit.

Arsenal recovered to draw 0-0 at home to Manchester United in mid-week, but Wenger admitted afterwards that his

players has been left “nervous” after their chastening experience at An� eld.

Nevertheless, the London club pre-vailed 2-0 when the sides met at the Emirates Stadium in November and Wenger is con� dent that his players will be determined to restore pride af-ter their capitulation seven days ago.

Liverpool manager Rodgers has been eager to play down his side’s title chanc-es, but after winning 3-2 at Fulham on Wednesday the Merseyside club are only four points o� the pace in the league.

Rodgers, however, is reluctant to become further embroiled in the verbal sparring that looks set to characterise the � nal three months of the season.

Liverpool are the form team in the Premier League at the moment and strik-er Daniel Sturridge can set a new club record by scoring in a ninth consecutive game if he � nds the net against Arsenal.l

Roma set for Samp test, leaders Juve host Chievo

Sampdoria coach Sinisa Mihajlovic will put his close friendship with Roma captain Francesco Totti to one side in a bid to hand the Serie A title con-

tenders their second shock of the week.Roma took a 3-2 advantage over Na-

poli into their Italian Cup semi-� nal sec-ond leg on Wednesday but departed with their tails between their legs after a 3-0 rout by Rafael Benitez’s side, who will now meet Fiorentina in the Cup � nal.

Rudi Garcia’s Roma have so far done well to stay in touch with leaders Ju-ventus -- they are nine points behind with a game in hand -- and keep Anto-nio Conte’s champions on their toes as

they bid for a third successive scudetto.But while Juventus are expected

to claim an easy three points at home against a Chievo side who are just one point above the drop zone, Roma’s task against Sampdoria is not quite so straightforward.

Mihajlovic remains friends with Roma captain and icon Totti but the former Lazio mid� elder expects his side to play to the open, attacking game that has helped him steer them out of the danger zone to just below mid-table since his appointment two months ago.

After Wednesday’s shocker, Garcia expects a reaction from his side, whom he said were not clinical enough in both legs of their Italian Cup semi.

Roma will be expected to beat

Parma when their game, postponed due to heavy rain two weeks ago, is � nally played.

Juve coach Antonio Conte will expect nothing less than three points from his side at home to Chievo, although his plans to give Mirko Vucinic a rare start fell � at after the striker was ruled out for several weeks with a sprainted knee.

Conte could reshu� e his mid� eld trio of Paul Pogba, Arturo Vidal and Andrea Pirlo by bringing in Claudio Marchisio, according to reports.

Napoli are third, four points adrift of Roma and 13 behind Juve, and are also in action on Sunday away to rele-gation-threatened Sassuolo.

In Saturday’s only game, Fiorentina host Inter in a match deemed impor-tant for both sides’ chances of qualify-ing for Europe next season.

Fiorentina are fourth, three points behind Napoli, but with an eight-point lead on Walter Mazzarri’s men.

Struggling Milan, meanwhile, host Bologna on Friday in a match brought forward due to the Champions League � rst leg last 16 clash at home to Atletico Madrid on Wednesday. l

AC Milan's coach Clarence Seedorf (R) talks to Mario Balotelli during their Italian Serie A match against Bologna at San Siro Stadium in Milan on Friday REUTERS

Former Argentine player Diego Maradona (C), his lawyer Angelo Pisani (L) and member of the European Parliament Crescenzio Rivellini (R) pose with an European Union � ag after a news conference at the European Parliament o� ce in Rome on Friday REUTERS

SportDHAKA TRIBUNE Sunday, February 16, 2014 15

Mini Handball begins tomorrowMilk Man Mini Handball Tournament will get underway with the match be-tween Bananai Bidyaniketon and Viqa-runnisa Noon School & College at the M Mansur Ali National Handball Stadium tomorrow. A total of 26 teams includ-ing 15 boys’ and 11 girls’ are taking part in the competition, it was informed at a press conference yesterday. The total budget of the event is approximately Tk240000 among which the sponsor organistaion Pran-RFL group will pro-vide Tk200000.

–Tribune Desk

Mourinho intensi� es Wenger attackChelsea manager Jose Mourinho has gone one step further in his criticism of Arsene Wenger by claiming he would have quit by now if he had been as unsuccessful as the Arsenal boss. The high-pro� le managers became embroiled in a war of words on Friday as the Premier League title race hots up, with Mourinho labelling his Arsenal counterpart “a specialist in failure”. Wenger, whose side are one point be-hind their London rivals in the Premier League title race, claimed that many of the teams at the top are afraid to back themselves due to a fear of failure, with Mourinho having labelled Chelsea the “little horse” behind Manchester City and Arsenal. Yet, just hours later, Mourinho hit back with his “failure” jibe, a reference to the fact Arsenal under Wenger haven’t won a major trophy since lifting the 2005 FA Cup.Mourinho said that if he went even half as long as Wenger without winning a trophy at a club he’d resign.

–AFP

Pellegrini reveals schedule fearsManchester City manager Manuel Pel-legrini is concerned his side may su� er in the long-run for a � xture pile-up caused by their ongoing involvement in four competitions this season. The club’s Premier League clash at home to Sunderland on Wednesday was post-poned because of the severe weather battering England’s north-west. That meant City had an unexpected rest ahead of Saturday’s headlining FA Cup � fth round clash against Premier League title rivals Chelsea and next week’s home Champions League tie with Spanish giants Barcelona. However, City have already postponed a derby trip to Manchester United because of their in-volvement in next month’s League Cup � nal and a home clash with Aston Villa will also be re-arranged if they defeat Chelsea in the FA Cup. “Both things are good and bad,” Pellegrini said Friday. “It is better to have more rest because we have two important games on Saturday and Tuesday but also, as we postponed the game, we are going to have a lot of games during midweeks at the end of the season.

–AFP

QUICK BYTES

Sony Six3:30AM (Monday)New Zealand v India2nd Test: Day 4Ten Cricket2:30PMSouth Africa v Australia1st Test, Day 5Star Sports 412:50 PMSochi 2014 Winter OlympicGames Day 98:00PMItalian Serie AJuventus v Chievo Verona10:00PMFA CupArsenal v LiverpoolLa Liga12:00AMAthletic Bilbao v Espanyol2:00AMSevilla v ValenciaStar Sports 211:15AMICC U-19 World CupEngland v Sri Lanka10:00PMLa Liga Getafe v Real Madrid1:45PMItalian Serie AAS Roma v SampdoriaTen SportsFrench Ligue 110:00PMEvian Thonon v Losc Lille2:00AMSt Etienne v Olympique Marseille

DAY’S WATCH

Australia pacer Mitchell Johnson celebrates after taking the wicket of South Africa's Petersen, during the 4th day of their � rst Test at Super Sport Park in Centurion yesterday AFP

Halep heads Doha storm as seeds are blown away

Simona Halep again proved herself the most exciting new young star on the WTA circuit as she rode the storm which has blown away so many of the seeds at the Qatar Open.

Halep, a 22-year-old Romanian who was voted WTA Tour newcomer of the year, needed less than an hour to over-whelm the fourth-seeded Sara Errani, and allowed one of the tour’s gamest � ghters only two games as she hurtled into the semi-� nals. A highly e� ective � rst serve and strident � at hitting on the run built up Halep’s impressive momen-tum, which earned the last seven games in succession and created a feeling that she will be climbing the top 10 standings she reached for the � rst time last month.

“Actually I could not run very well because I have an injury,” Halep said

to a mixture of amazement and amuse-ment after her 6-2, 6-0 success. “So I just wanted to be aggressive and � nish the points as soon as I can.”

She succeeded so well in this that no-one uninitiated would have been aware she was carrying an Achilles strain. Ha-lep may also have been motivated by the memory of a heavy defeat by the Italian in Miami last year. It means that 11 of the 15 seeds who started the tournament have failed to reach their allotted places.

Earlier, the third-seeded former Wimbledon champion Petra Kvitova was ousted almost as quickly by Jelena Jankovic, whose recovery from a career-threatening plunge is continuing nicely.

Purely in tennis terms, the result was not really a surprise, as the former world number one from Serbia had beaten the unpredictably talented Czech in their last meeting, late last year in Beijing. l

Top seeds Del Potro, Murray tumble by same scoreline

Top seed Juan Martin del Potro and number two Andy Murray were both knocked out of the Rotterdam World Tennis in quarter-� nal upsets on Fri-day by the same 6-3, 6-4 scorelines.

Latvian Ernests Gulbis ended del Potro’s winning run when he beat the top seed, while unseeded Croatian Marin Cilic won his eighth match in a row this season with Murray his latest victim.

The Scot had claimed victory in nine of their 10 previous matches but was well o� his game as he went out in 71 minutes, losing serve once in each set.

“I would have liked to have done better but I’m not frustrated. I’m strik-ing the ball well,” said Murray, who

now has 10 days before his next start in Acapulco.

Third seed Tomas Berdych main-tained the seeded status quo with his 6-7 (9/11), 6-2, 6-4 comeback over Po-land’s Jerzy Janowicz taking nearly two-and-a-half hours.

Dutchman Igor Sijsling beat German Philipp Kohlschreiber 6-2, 2-6, 6-1 to become the � rst home player to reach the last four here in more than a de-cade. He will face Cilic, champion last week at home in Zagreb.

Gulbis, who can be brilliant or less than impressive depending on his mood, preyed upon Del Potro as the Argentine took treatment before the start of the second set on the left wrist which has been posing problems since last month in Australia.

Del Potro came to the match with-out the ability to hit a penetrating backhand as he plays with medical permission while trying to clear up his wrist problem.

Gulbis will be playing in his � rst semi-� nal at the event after advancing in 81 minutes with a dozen aces as he forced Del Potro to save seven of nine break points.

Del Potro said he has felt delicate all week but still believes his dodgy wrist is on the mend.

Murray is still recovering � tness af-ter autumn back surgery and has not looked comfortable all week.

Cilic said his big serve saw him through. “Tonight was a good win, I played some great tennis,” said the Croatian. l

‘Not punching blokes’ is way forward for reformed Warner

Another century for David Warner was further proof of a growing maturity in both his professional and personal life, the opener said after a quick� re ton on Friday put Australia in a commanding po-sition in the � rst test against South Africa.

“Probably not going out and punch-ing blokes at a club sums it up,” he told reporters of his transition from the en-fant terrible of the team less than a year ago to a key player in Australia’s march to a formidable 479-run lead after the third day at SuperSport Park.

“I put a lot of credit down to a lot of hard work with my batting coach back home and also my conditioning trainer. Also since I’ve settled down with Can-dice, things have been fantastic there. The way she prepares for her sport in-� uences me to knuckle down and be the best I can at the moment.”

His partner Candice Falzon is a pro-fessional endurance athlete who com-petes in ironman competitions.

“I’m scoring runs more consistently now, although I’d like them more in the � rst innings than in the second innings but I’m just enjoying my cricket at the moment and enjoying winning games for Australia.”

The 27-year-old Warner smashed 115 o� 151 balls on Friday as he thrashed South Africans bowlers to all corners of the ground, although he survived three catching chances. It was a marked trans-formation from June last year when he was � ned and almost sent home before the start of the Ashes series in England after punching England player Joe Root in a Birmingham night club.

Warner was suspended for a month but was spared the embarrassment of becoming the � rst player ever sent home from an Ashes series.

He denied a drinking problem but was out of sorts in his three test ap-pearances, amassing just 128 runs as England won the series comfortably.

Warner bounced back in the follow-up Ashes series over the Australian summer with a century in the � rst test in Brisbane, another in Perth and end-ed as his team’s top run scorer in the 5-0 whitewash with 523 at an average of 58.11.

He has shown no loss of form at the start of the three-match series against top-ranked South Africa. l

Nishikori, Lu advance, Hewitt out at Memphis

Defending champion Kei Nishikori rallied to reach the semi-� nals of the $647,000 ATP US Indoor Champion-ships on Friday, but Australian third seed Lleyton Hewitt was eliminated by American Michael Russell.

Nishikori battled back to defeat Rus-sian Alex Bogomolov 3-6, 6-3, 6-2 to book a last-four berth against Russell, who downed Hewitt 6-3, 7-6 (8/6).

Russell earned his � rst victory in four career meetings with the Aussie in one hour, 48 minutes. Taiwan fourth seed Lu Yen-Hsun also advanced, ousting US quali� er Alex Kuznetsov 6-1, 6-4 in 74 minutes to reach a semi-� nal against Croatian Ivo Karlovic, a 7-6 (7/4), 6-7 (3/7), 6-3 winner over American Jack Sock.

Nishikori, an ATP top seed for the � rst time, saved all four break points he faced in the � nal set to win after two

hours and 18 minutes.“It wasn’t easy,” Nishikori said. “My

tennis level is not quite 100 percent yet, so I hope I can get better. I have a lot of con� dence and my goal is to win the tournament.”

Nishikori, ranked 16th, has never before played Russell, who is ranked 98th and has never won an ATP title.

Bogomolov, aged 30 and rated 80 spots below Nishikori is also seeking his � rst ATP title, and he broke Nishikori’s � rst two service games for a 4-0 lead.

Nishikori broke back in the seventh game but Bogomolov held in the ninth to take the � rst set. The second set featured two early exchanges of breaks before Ni-shikori held for a 4-3 edge, then broke the Russian and held again to force a third set.

Nishikori, 24, broke for a 2-1 edge and again to seize command before � ghting o� the Russian’s � nal break chance in the last game. l

Nadal back in the groove in Rio

World number one Rafael Nadal will top the bill at next week’s inaugural Rio Open as he returns from the back in-jury that wrecked his Australian Open title assault.

The Spanish star, denied a 14th Grand Slam title in Melbourne by Stan-islas Wawrinka, will be the biggest draw for what is South America’s only combined ATP World Tour 500 and WTA International event. The event re-places Memphis in the tennis calendar.

For Nadal, forced to skip Buenos Aires last week as he returns to full � t-ness, the tournament is an early step-ping stone in a claycourt season he hopes will culminate in a ninth French Open crown. Fellow-Spaniard David Ferrer will be Nadal’s main rival as the latter returns to Brazil having captured the Sao Paulo titles last year.

The $1.5 million event at Rio’s Jockey Club Brasileiro will have two stars from the past on hand in triple Wimbledon and quadruple US Open champion Ma-ria Bueno, as well as three-time French open winner Gustavo Kuerten.

The pair, the biggest names in Bra-zilian tennis history, are both sched-uled to make a show of backing South America’s biggest tennis event.

Nadal said Friday he is hoping to leave his back problems behind him as he tunes up for another successful clay swing this season.

“I hope it will stand up well. I wasn’t able to play Buenos Aires and feel bad about that but luckily here I am in Rio, which is a new city for me.

“I hope I shall be able to compete well,” he told reporters.

“I trained at home for a few days and now we’ll see how it goes at the top level.” l

Pakistani blind wicketkeeper Nisar Ali (CL) tries to stop a sweep shot of Indian blind cricketer Ajay (CR) during their match at the Bagh-e-Jinnah cricket ground in Lahore yesterday. A 17-man Indian squad are in Pakistan to play a series of three Twenty20s and as many one-day matches in Pakistan in their � rst visit for three years AFP

Andy Murray of Britain waves hand to the crowd after his quarter � nal match at the ABN AMRO World Tennis Tournament in Rotterdam, The Netherlands, on Friday AFP

16 Back PageDHAKA TRIBUNE Sunday, February 16, 2014

Street kids hit the fair in search of living

n Ahmed Zayeef

While hundreds of children along with their parents thronged the fair during the “shishu prohor” (chil-dren’s hour) yesterday, a number of street children were found struggling to earn a little money by doing small businesses inside the fair.

Eight-year-old Md Alam collects scrap bottles inside the Bangla Acad-emy.

While collecting scrap bottles he watches children joyfully buying books from the stalls.

He lives in front of the High Court with his mother, who also collects scraps, and studies in class one at Shegunbagicha Ideal School.

“I come here every day after class. After collecting bottles me and my mother go to Puran Dhaka to sell the

bottles and buy food for us. I do it ev-ery day as my mother cannot gather a lot of bottles alone,” Alam said.

“I can read now and I love to read. But I do not have money to buy the colourful books. However, I will buy a lot of books one day when I will start earning,” he added.

Like Alam, a number of street children gather at the Amar Ekushey Book Fair every day. Some of them sell � owers, some collect scrapped bottles, while some carry books to di� erent stalls.

These children, who are studying in di� erent schools run by di� erent social welfare organisations, cannot a� ord to buy books although they are capable to read. The fair has become a new spot for them to earn liveli-hood but unfortunately the festivity of the fair does not really matter in their lives.

The Bangla Academy authority celebrated its second “Shishu Pro-hor” yesterday from 11am to 3pm, four hours exclusively dedicated to children. The children were found putting on designs with water-colour and paint brush on their cheeks and hands.

Simultaneously, at the Doyel chot-tor, the street children were found waiting for publishers to carry books to the stalls on their handmade trol-leys-a new medium to make money developed at the fair.

Hridoy, a class three student who lives in the capital’s Anondobazar slum, said: “My father is a day labour-er, but whatever he earns is not enough to run the family. Every day I earn Tk100-150 by carrying books to help my father. Before the fair started I used to work in a hotel near my house.”

Maria and Marjia, two sisters were found selling � owers in front of the Surawardy Udyan. They come here every day from the Kamrangirchar slum. Maria, the elder one, said: “Our father died a few years ago in a road accident. Now my mother looks after us. We help her by selling � owers.”

A total of 126 books hit the fair yesterday, the � fteenth day of the fair while 17 books were unveiled at the Nazrul Mancha.

A discussion on Lalon Shah was held presided over by former Vice-Chancellor of Rabindra Bharati University Professor Pabitra Sarker at the central stage. l

126new

books published

A M A R E K U S H E Y B O O K FA I R 2 0 1 4

MA

HM

UD

HO

SSA

IN O

PU

Two children killed in � resn Tribune Report

Separate incidents of � re have claimed the lives of two children in Gazipur and Brahmanbaria, while three workers of a steel mill sustained serious burn inju-ries in the capital’s Shyampur yesterday.

Six-year-old Mehedi Hasan of Gazi-pur died in his sleep when his family’s house was burned down in Kaliakoir upazila on Friday night.

Sub-Inspector Syed Azharul Islam, in-charge of Mouchak police outpost, said Mehdi’s mother Moyna Begum and his grandmother were working the night-shift at a garment factory when the � re took place at their house in Ka-deria Colony of Kathaliachala area.

When going to work, Moyna had locked the doors leaving a sleeping Me-hedi inside, the SI said.

There had been a load shedding in the area since the evening, the police o� cial said, adding that: “Electricity was recon-nected around 10:15pm and a wire of a nearby room of another house caught � re because of an electrical short circuit. The blazes spread within moments.”

Locals found Mehedi’s body inside the room when the � ames were doused

after an hour’s e� ort, reports our cor-respondent. Kaliakoir Fire Service and Civil Defense station o� cer Apurba said locals doused the � ames before � re � ghters could reach the spot.

Meanwhile, at Titaspara area of Brahmanbaria town, a three-year-old boy died yesterday when a � re gutted his family’s house.

The deceased was identi� ed as Yam-in, son of Kamal Mia of Titaspara.

The victim’s father told the Dha-ka Tribune that their tin-shed house caught � re from an electrical short circuit. Yamin was asleep during the incident. Sensing the smoke, locals rescued him but he died allegedly from su� ocation and electric shock.

Tapos Chandra Ghosh, assistant po-lice superintendent of Brahmanbaria Model police station, said the police have visited the spot to � nd out more details, reports our correspondent.

In the capital, three workers of a steel mill sustained severe burn inju-ries when melted iron fell on them at Shyampur yesterday.

Three workers – Sanjay, 25, Moham-mad Ripon Ahmed, 25, Md Belal, 41, sustained burn injuries of 90%, 75%

and 60% respectively in the incident, con� rmed Partha Shankar Paul, resi-dent surgeon of the burn unit of Dhaka Medical College Hospital.

Harun-ur-Rashid, senior supervisor of the Kadamtoli Steel Mills, where the incident took place, said the injured were working at the production unit where scrap metals were being melted in a machine.

“Because of a technical fault, sudden-ly the melted iron blasted in the machine and poured on the workers,” he said.

Polash, a coworker of the victims, said: “In that section [of the mill], we always stay vigilant so that no intact tin or iron-made bottle or box goes inside the machine with other scraps, as they blast in high temperature during melt-ing. Unfortunately that kind of bot-tle went into the machine with other scraps to be melted.”

In total, seven workers sustained in-juries in the incident, but four of them had su� ered minor injuries, he said.

Kadamtoli police station OC Mazharul Islam said they have visited the spot and the owner of the mill would be interro-gated to � nd out if there was any negli-gence in providing workers’ safety. l

Picnic bus crash kills seven kids in Jessoren Tribune Report

At least nine persons, including seven primary school students, were killed in separate accidents in three districts yesterday.

The seven school children were killed and 40 others injured as a picnic bus fell into a roadside pond in Chou-gachha of Jessore last night, according to our correspondent.

ASP Reshma Sharmin told the Dha-ka Tribune that the victims were the students of Benapole Government Pri-mary School. However, she could not con� rm the identities of the deceased.

Chougachha police said the accident took place around 8:30pm when the driv-er lost control over the steering of the bus.

Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina ex-pressed profound shock at the deaths of school children, according to UNB. In a condolence message, she asked for proper investigation into the road crash and punitive actions if anybody was found guilty.

Our Khagrachhari correspondent re-ports that a class VIII student was killed and 17 others injured when a car over-turned in Atbari area under Matiranga upazila.

The deceased was Riachh Tripura, 13, a student of Alutilla Junior High School, said Matiranga police station O� -cer-in-Charge Mohammad Mainuddin.

Locals rescued the injured and took them to Matiranga Upazila Health Complex and Khagrachhari Adhunik Sadar Hospital.

According to our Lalmonirhat cor-respondent, a businessman riding on a motorcycle was killed when a truck hit him in Patgram town of the district. The deceased was Alam Hossain, 45.

Police said a Dhaka-bound truck from Burimari Land Port hit his motor-cycle while he was crossing the road. A case was � led in this connection. l

Over 600 ‘secretly’ admitted in private med schools after deadline expiresColleges ignore the cut-o� mark for admission set by ministry n Moniruzzaman Uzzal

Several private medical colleges have allegedly admitted students with scores as low as 110, ignoring the cut-o� mark of 120 set by the health ministry.

Sources said several medical and dental colleges have “secretly” admit-ted around 600-700 students who had scored as low as 110.

The fresh admissions came as the original deadline for private medical and dental colleges expiring yesterday.

Among those who allegedly violated the admission cut-o� mark, Samorita Medical College, a Dhaka-based private medical school, openly � outed ministry directives by publishing advertisements on national dailies calling for the admis-

sion of students with scores as low as 110. Senior o� cials of the health ministry

and the Directorate General of Health

Services (DGHS) told the Dhaka Tribune that they had noticed the advertise-ment, which they termed illegal and a clear violation of the ministry directive.

Dr ABM Abdul Hannan, director (medical education and manpower development) of the DGHS, said the ministry had been informed about the advertisement and the private medical college has also been asked to clarify how they published the advertisement, violating the direction of the ministry.

Aiyubur Rahman, an additional health secretary, told the Dhaka Tribune that the health ministry had not issued any instruction to admit students with a score of 110, adding that the Bangladesh Private Medical College Association (BPMCA) failed to produce any docu-ment despite claiming that the High Court had issued an order in this regard.

Shah Md Selim, secretary general of the BPMCA, yesterday said the high

court had issued an order to the health ministry for allowing students in pri-vate medical and dental colleges with the score of 110.

However, he said no new student would be admitted in violation of the previously set cut-o� mark, before a full copy of the verdict was received.

Selim said the BPMCA would submit an application to the health ministry to further extend the admission deadline, which had already been extended sev-eral times before.

He hoped to get the full copy of the High Court judgement within a couple of days, which would be submitted to the ministry along with the application for time extension.

However, 600-700 seats would re-

main vacant even after the cut-o� mark would be lowered, Selim added.

Seeking anonymity, several senior o� cials of the BPMCA told the Dhaka Tribune that the ministry did not re-spond to their previous application for relaxing the original cut-o� mark of 120.

On February 9, the BPMCA held a meeting in the city, where statistics revealed that a large number of seats were vacant at di� erent medical col-leges. The Sikder Medical College had around 40 to 50 seats vacant, while there were 45% vacant seats at TMMS Medical College, 40-50% at City Medi-cal College, 35% at Munnu Medical Col-lege, 50% at Southern Medical College, 25% at East West Medical College, 20% at Taerunessa Medical College, 50%

at North Bengal Medical College, 50% at Shahabuddin Medical College, 50% at Mainamoti Medical College, 15% at Eastern Medical College, 60% at MH Samorita Medical College, 45% at Dr Sirajul Islam Medical College, 45% at Northern International Medical Col-lege, 50% at International Medical Col-lege and 60% at Nightingale Medical College.

In accordance with a decision reached at the meeting, BPMCA Trea-surer Ikram Hossain Bizu � led a case on February 10 with the bench of Jus-tice Kazi Rezaul Hossain and ABM Altaf Hossain.

According to BPMCA senior o� cials, the judges then passed an order to admit students with scores as low as 110. l

Contrary laws a hurdle in rape casesn Udisa Islam

Contradictions in existing laws are de-priving rape victims from getting the best possible justice amid longstanding demand from rights activists to ensure capital punishment for the crime.

In the Code of Criminal Procedure, better known as the penal code, al-though there is a provision for life term imprisonment for committing rape, there are also mentions of other terms of up to 10 years.

According to the specialised Women and Children Repression Prevention Act, coined in 2000 to speed up the tri-al of rape cases and ensure justice for women, the highest punishment for rape is death sentence.

However, for awarding death sen-tence, a court has to be convinced that the victim has died because she was raped or injured from “gang rape.”

On Thursday, a court in Manikganj sentenced two men to death for raping an 18-year old garment factory worker in a running bus in Savar near Dhaka.

Recently, two special tribunals in Chittagong and Bogra sentenced sev-en people to life term imprisonment for abducting and raping three girls. In Chittagong, the Women and Chil-dren Repression Prevention Tribunal 1 found three people guilty of abducting two girls and gang-raping them in 2011 and sentenced them to life in prison.

Lawyers, however, said these were just exceptions. In most other cases � led in connection with rapes and at-tempted rapes, the victims were de-prived of justice, mainly because the cases were � led under the penal code, the less strict law towards rape.

Prakash Ranjan Biswas, a lower court practitioner, told the Dhaka Tri-bune: “In our country, justice cannot always be ensured because of igno-rance about existing laws. The police stations often encourage or suggest the complainants to � le cases under the penal code instead of the special-ised Women and Children Repression Prevention Act. As a result, the court cannot always ensure the highest pun-ishment for such crimes.”

Sources said sometimes the po-lice stations mediated understanding between the victim and the accused.

There had been instances where the victim or her family decided to not � le a case after getting meagre compensa-tion from the rapist.

In November last year, two alleged rapists were arrested by police in a vil-lage in Faridpur district. Police, howev-er, later freed the two. The local Union Parishad chairman said the duo paid Tk20,000 to the family of the house-wife, whom they had allegedly raped. Local police claimed that nobody had come to � le any case.

In May last year, a man forcefully entered a house in the capital’s Badda and allegedly raped a woman. Police picked up the alleged rapist from that very house. However, a few days later, the alleged rapist, with strong political connections, secured bail and started threatening the family of the girl to withdraw the case � led again him. He has never been put behind bars again and the woman and her husband have since been struggling for justice.

Lawyers say life term is not enough as punishment for heinous crimes such as raping. They also allege that weak investigation, incorrect police report, and failure of prosecutors and police o� cers to present strong cases before criminal courts are vital reasons behind low conviction rate in rape cases.

The 2013 annual report of rights body Ain O Salis Kendra mentioned a total of 813 reported rape incidents and 185 attempted rapes. Among those, 287 victims were minor girls, of whom 188 were less than 12 years old. Some 256 were gang rapes.

However, only about 550 cases were � led in connection with all those rapes and attempted rapes. Moreover, most of these cases have remained in the shelves because the prosecutions could not � nd enough witnesses.

Women’s rights activist Salma Khan, former chairman of the international Ce-dow committee, said: “Violence against women is the extreme form of prejudice where men often go unpunished. If we can ensure real punishment, then the circumstances will never encourage other people to commit the crime.”

She alleged that police did of not re-cord cases properly and as a result, the accused often got away with minimum punishment. l

Family members console Ripon, 25, who received burn injuries when a devastating � re broke out at a steel mill at Kadamtali yesterday morning. This photo was taken at the Burn Unit of Dhaka Medical College and Hospital RAJIB DHAR

A child uses a wooden trolley to transport books to and from book stalls at the Amar Ekushey Book Fair yesterday

Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina expressed profound shock at the deaths of school children

BPMCA secy gen says no new student will be admitted in violation of the previously set cut-o� mark, before a full copy of the High Court verdict is received

Editor: Zafar Sobhan, Published and Printed by Kazi Anis Ahmed on behalf of 2A Media Limited at Dainik Shakaler Khabar Publications Limited, 153/7, Tejgaon Industrial Area, Dhaka-1208. Editorial, News & Commercial O� ce: FR Tower, 8/C Panthapath, Shukrabad, Dhaka 1207. Phone: 9132093-94, Advertising: 9132155, Circulation: 9132282, Fax: News-9132192, e-mail: news@dhakatribune.com, info@dhakatribune.com, Website: www.dhakatribune.com

Continue to the Business section...

Business

www.dhakatribune.com/business SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 16, 2014

B3 New DSE chairman elected

B4 World shares head for best week of 2014

Accord starts RMG factory inspection this weekn Ibrahim Hossain Ovi

The Accord on Fire and Building Safety in Bangladesh will launch � rst phase inspection involving � re and structural integrity this week and it will inspect 200 apparel factories, from which its signatories source products, Accord said.

“We will begin apparel factory in-spection this week to perform � re, electrical, and building structural safe-ty inspections at Accord brand produc-ing factories,” Rob Wayss, Executive Director (Bangladesh Operations) of Accord on Fire and Building Safety in Bangladesh, told the Dhaka Tribune via email. “In the � rst phase,200 RMG fac-tories would be inspected,” he added.  

Meanwhile, the Bangladesh Gar-ment Manufacturers and Exporters Association (BGMEA) plans on having a meeting with Accord o� cials to share perspective on Bangladesh today.

The issue of � re and building safety came under the spotlight last year, fol-lowing the catastrophic incident at the Rana Plaza building collapse that killed over 1,100 workers.

the factory disaster, the retailers’ platform made a commitment to pro-vide � nancial and technical support to improve � re and building safety stan-dard of RMG factories, from which they source products.  

The Accord, a platform of 150 Euro-pean Union retailers will inspect 1,500 factories under common standards to be completed by September 2014.The inspection will be conducted under the supervision of experts.

According to Rob, the Accord has hired four international engineering � rms to conduct initial inspections and is working to recruit another 25 Bangla-deshi engineers, who will be appointed as Accord sta� . 

“The international � rms the Accord has selected have  committed an adequate number of engineers  and have pro-vided viable plans to complete 1,500 inspections by September 2014,” Rob added.

The Accord was scheduled to be-gin factory inspection from November 2013, but facing certain obstacles, it failed to launch inspection in due time.

Replying to a query on completing the inspection within stipulated dead-line, Rob said “We are hopeful that the engineering teams will be able to safely conduct the 1500 scheduled and planned inspections and that this re-cent  hartal-free and blockade-free pe-riod continues. 

Last year, the Accord had investi-gated 10 factories for � re, electrical, and building safety in a pilot inspec-tion.   With the sustained unrest at the end of calendar year 2013, we were not able to complete all of the pilot inspec-tions we had planned,” said Rob. 

“We will meet with Accord today to have a discussion on the procedure of inspection and to share with them a view of the country’s RMG sector as factory owners are apprehensive about the inspection,” said Shahidullah Azim, BGMEA Vice President.

“It would not be wise if factory in-spection is conducted with the Amer-ican perspective in mind as the sector has matured without adequate plans in three decades,” said Azim, adding that it should take the perspective of Ban-gladesh under consideration.

On the other hand, he said,“The in-spection should be conducted in line with Bangladesh National Building Code (BNBC) and we are committed to make the sector complia nt but it needs time.” l

MRA to launch CIB services to discipline microcreditn Tribune Report

The Microcredit Regulatory Author-ity (MRA) plans to launch a Credit In-formation Bureau (CIB) soon to bring more discipline in lending and borrow-ing process of the micro-credit � nan-cial institutions.

Bangladesh Bank governor and also the chairman of MRA Atiur Rahman came up with the disclosure yesterday while he was addressing the ‘Dhaka Mi-crocredit Conference 2014’ in the city.

The conference organized by the Credit and Development Forum (CDF), was also addressed, among others, by state minister for � nance M Abdul Mannan, MRA executive vice-chairman Khandakar Muzharul Haque and CDF chairman Mosharrof Hossain.

Addressing the conference Atiur Rahman said, “MRA has been work-ing for introducing CIB services for the streamlining of the micro-� nancers.’’

Referring to the example of Bangla-desh Bank, he said, banks and � nancial institution under the ministry of � -nance oversee the activities of the cen-tral bank for ensuring e� ective credit risk management.

“Recently, a team has come back from Cambodia after witnessing fast-hand experiences about their mode of CIB services set for microcredit institutions.”

BB governor said, “Microcredit Fi-nancial Institutions (MIFs) have con-tributed a lot in alleviating poverty during the last two decades and also in bringing regeneration in the county’s economy through credit disbursement in the remote areas.”

Credit Information Bureau (CIB) usually maintains records of an individ-ual’s borrowing and payment records. These records are submitted to CIB of the central bank by the member banks and � nancial institutions and this infor-mation is later on used to help evaluate and approve loan applications.

If CIB was established by the MRA,

such records will be submitted by the MFIs including Grameen Bank and BRAC.

The central bank had earlier set up CIB on August 18, 1992 aiming to im-prove credit risks and reduce the ex-tent of default loan in the country’s banking system.

The governor has also asked the banks to lend the MFIs with reduced interest rates, as they have played an important role in creating small en-trepreneurs in the remote areas where banking facilities are not available.

“Banks are interested to lend credit to the big borrowers but in some cases

they are not able to realise the credit. However, credit given to the MFIs does not remain unrealised and the rate of loan realisation is also good,” he said.

Lending to the MFIs has been in-creased to 250 from 91 in 2011, as many banks, even foreign ones, began to pick up microcredit institutions for disbursing loan among small farmers, said the governor.

“I have no hesitation to mentioned that the banking industry is now on strong � nancial footing but MFIs are yet to reach that level due to many problems, including fund shortage, higher interest rate, bank’s reluc-tance to give loan and hidden costs,”he said.

Atiur said, “Bangladesh Bank will include microcredit institutions in its Tk200 crore project for credit dis-bursement among small farmers hav-ing bank accounts. Central bank plans to introduce Tk10-bank account for the street children as like as the small farmers, cleaners and RMG workers.

The governor has also urged the MFIs to diversify their services besides lending. “You (MFIs) can give various services like cold storage facilities to preserve perishable goods like potato,” he said.

Since its establishment in 2006, MRA gives licences to 732 MFIs with 1900 branches across the country. l

ICB Islamic Bank’s share acquisition haltsn Asif Showkat Kallol

ICB Islamic Bank has stopped talking about selling majority of its shares to the Investment Corporation of Bangla-desh after asking for an independent audit of the � nancially-troubled bank.

“We want to buy the majority shares of the ICB Islamic Bank. But it seems that they are not interested after ask-ing for an independent audit,” ICB Chairman Dr SM Mahfuzur Rahman told the Dhaka Tribune yesterday.

“They (the management of ICB Bank) have stopped communication with us,” he said.

ICB Islamic Bank has continued to face � nancial troubles and the acquire-ment of the bank’s ownership by the state-run ICB may raise the hopes of recovery. However, the Bank and Fi-nancial Institutions Division is exam-ining the proposal of majority shares purchase by the ICB. The proposal will be placed to Finance Minister AMA Muhith for his consent.

ICB will acquire 52.76% shares of the bank now owned by the Switzer-land-based ICB Financial Group Hold-ings AG, a company listed with the London Stock Exchange.

“ICB in principle has decided to buy

the shares of the bank after an inde-pendent audit,” said an o� cial of the division.

According to the sources, the shares price has been agreed at Tk8 each against the face value of Tk10.

On Thursday last, the bank’s shares in the Dhaka Stock Exchange was trad-ed at Tk6.30 each.

At a recent meeting, the board of directors of the ICB empowered its Managing Director Fayekuzzaman to sign a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the bank.

Sources said the central bank has agreed to o� er all kinds of cooperation to the ICB to acquire the shares of the bank. The Orion Capital Ltd, a poten-tial strategic partner for the acquisi-tion, has sent a draft MoU to the ICB.

Sources said the ICB Financial Group Holdings AG, a sponsor shareholder of the bank, in its MoU said the shares will be sold on “as-is-where-is” basis.

Selling price of the shares will re-main � xed at Tk8 which should not be changed after due diligence.

It also wanted payment of the val-ue of 10% shares it was disposing of before due diligence and the rest 90% be paid before the signing of the agree-ment as proof of fund. l

NBR demands tax of Tk3,000cr on ‘ SIM resale’Operators say revenue body unilaterally makes the decision of a tripartite review committeen Muhammad Zahidul Islam

The National Board of Revenue (NBR) has � nalised a report which says four mobile phone operators will have to pay Tk3,010 crore as tax for SIM resale.

But the operators said they didn’t resell the SIMs, rather replaced them. For replacement of SIM cards there is no tax imposed as it will lead to double taxation.

The revenue board came to the point after the scrutiny of the SIM re-placement data supplied by Grameen-phone, Banglalink, Robi and Airtel.

According to the NBR, 79% of the documents showed the subscriber identi� cation module (SIM) cards were resold to di� erent subscribers.

SIM resale to a di� erent owner is not allowed by the rule, said the industry insiders. NBR report said nearly 79% of the sub-mitted documents of SIM replacement didn’t match with the original Sub-scriber Application Forms (SAF).

The four private mobile companies criticised the report labelling as “uni-lateral and unacceptable.”

Before 3G auction, a report of a tri-partite committee with representatives from telecom regulator BTRC, NBR and mobile operators said a few of the doc-uments were problematic.

The NBR prepared a terms of ref-erence (TOR) last year, which was ap-proved by the � nance ministry before the 3G auction to quantify the resold SIMs, said Vivek Sood, chief executive o� cer of Grameenphone.

But the NBR unilaterally revised the TOR after the operators participated in the 3G auction which is not acceptable, he said while speaking at the compa-ny’s yearend � nancial disclosure at a city hotel last week.

He hoped the NBR chairman would review the matter and � nd a solution.

In December last year, Association

of Mobile Telecom Operators of Ban-gladesh (Amtob) sent a letter in this regard to the NBR, Bangladesh Tele-communication and Regulatory Com-mission (BTRC) and telecommunica-tions ministry seeking a solution.

The letter signed by Amtob secre-tary general TIM Nurul Kabir and other four senior executives from the opera-tors said the NBR used a new process for re-veri� cation of the SIM informa-tion.

The SIM Card Replacement Review Committee (SCRRC) of the NBR pre-pared the report after scrutinising the SAF, SIM Registration Form (SRF) and Undertaking Form (UTF) of the opera-tors submitted between August, 2010 and December, 2011.

According to the SCRRC claim, four mobile phone operators have dodged tax through selling old SIMs to new clients. Currently, the companies pay Tk300 tax against the sale of a SIM card.

The Dhaka Tribune obtained a re-port on SIM re-veri� cation prepared by the telecom regulator earlier, which showed there was no inconsistency in the information.

BTRC and mobile operators’ repre-sentatives didn’t sign the NBR report although they were a part of the re-ver-i� cation process.

According to the SCRRC report, Grameenphone’s 94.79% of informa-tion were inconsistent.

This is the highest among the opera-tors, followed by Banglalink’s 94.83%, Robi’s 93.42% and Airtel’s 29.81% .

The committee veri� ed 1,400 sam-ples from Grameenphone’s data, Ban-glalink’s 1,200 samples and Airtel’s 1,097 samples

Grameenphone failed to provide any CDR data before 2010, so the com-mittee could not cross-check the data for the period, said the SCRRC report.

It also said Banglalink provided in-complete data of a speci� c � eld while Airtel’s CDR failed to provide incoming call record, subscribers’ handset IMIE number and some system logs before the committee.

The NBR has been demanding the amount of tax from the four companies since early 2012.

After analysing the documents, the amount of payable tax decreased to Tk3,010 crore from the initial demand for Tk3,062 crore.

Of the amounts, Grameenphone Tk1,562 crore, Banglalink Tk762 crore, Robi Tk647 crore and Airtel Tk39 crore. l

Bandwidth export may not yield immediate pro� t for BSCCLn Tahmidur Rahman

The revenue to be generated from ex-port of bandwidth is unlikely to result in immediate pro� t for Bangladesh Submarine Cable Company Limited (BSCCL), a state-owned company listed on Dhaka Stock Exchange.

The revenue from the exports may not result in immediate pro� t, analysts said.

“The proceeds will be used to � -nance a Tk100 crore project to install the second submarine cable, expected to be live by the � rst quarter of 2016," BSCCL Managing Director Monwar Hossain told the Dhaka Tribune yester-day.

On the � rst day of last week, the company obtained an approval of ex-porting its unused bandwidth that would help surge revenue by at least Tk60 crore annually.

Before the approval, a rumour spread across the stock market that BSCCL is going to get the government to export the bandwidth, stock inves-tors alleged.

“The government has given us ap-proval for renting or leasing out 40 lakh MIU-kilometres of internet bandwidth as we have a total of 82MIU-km of un-

used bandwidth,” Monwar said.However, the stock last week registered a gain of 15.9% over the previous week at Dhaka Stock Exchange, riding on the back of a buying spree as the total trade value stood at Tk144.9 crore.

The “A” category company’s stock price saw a surge of almost 30% in past two weeks.

The current cable provides 200Gbps while the new connection will add up

1,400Gbps that may free more band-width for export in future.

Contrary to the positive news of bandwidth export approval, the com-pany last month reported its half yearly pro� ts that decreased by 50% against same period a year earlier.

According to the unaudited report, the company’s pro� t stood at Tk24.6 crore after tax in (July to December) 2013 while it was Tk49.2 crore in the

same period of 2012.The latest unaudited report shows

a sharp fall in rent revenue of IPLC (International Private Lease Circuit), which fell from Tk64.7 crore in the sec-ond half of 2012 to Tk41.9 crore during the second half of 2013.

“Our rent revenue fell due to unholy competitions that exist in the currently unstable market,” said the BSCCL MD. “However, we will not join the price war as we are clearly the better one in terms of quality and ethics, which eventually will help us overthrow the competition despite the inequality.”

Industry insiders alleged that BSCCL competitors like International Terres-trial Cable (ITC) operators are provid-ing bandwidth at a lower rate as they do not yet have to share revenue and charges like revenue fees with regula-tor BTRC.

The BSCCL MD said the company would perform even better, despite export revenue, once the market sta-bilises and a level-playing ground is created.

Replying to a question, he said in-crease in the cost of electricity, gener-ator fuel, administration and deprecia-tion of core machinery put slight weigh on the company’s pro� tability. l

Date

Clos

ing

Pric

e

220

210

200

190

180

170

160

15-0

1-14

16-0

1-14

19-0

1-14

20-0

1-14

21-0

1-14

22-0

1-14

23-0

1-14

26-0

1-14

27-0

1-14

28-0

1-14

29-0

1-14

30-0

1-14

02-

02-

14

03-

02-

14

04-

02-

14

05-

02-

14

06-

02-

14

09-

02-

14

10-0

2-14

11-0

2-14

12-0

2-14

13-0

2-14

BANGLADESH SUBMARINE CABLE COMPANY LIMITED

ICB’s Tk31 lakh picnic allocation raises eyebrowsn Asif Showkat Kallol

Investment Corporation of Bangladesh (ICB), a state-run � nancial institution, ap-proved an allocation of Tk 31 lakh to hold annual picnic, prompting the authorities to ask for clari� cation from the ICB board of directors.

Banking and Financial Institutions Di-vision of the � nance ministry wanted to know the rationality of allocating “a huge amount of money” from the ICB fund, of-� cials said.

One of the board members from the � -nance division, Additional Secretary Gokul Chand Das, raised objection at a meeting of the board earlier when ICB o� cers sub-mitted a requisition for an amount of Tk37 lakh in January.

He pointed out that the issue should be discussed further and suggested includ-ing it in the regular agenda of the board meeting. But later, the board approved Tk31 lakh in its next meeting when Gokul was not present at the meeting. Now the Banking and Financial Institutions Division sought explanation from the ICB as to why they allocated the fund, according to a let-ter served to the ICB.

Chairman of ICB Dr SM Mahfuzur Rah-man said it is a misunderstanding of di-rectors. “If we see the matter blindly, the amount may be big for annual picnic. But it includes two other jobs like annual sport and cultural function.” l

'It would not be wise if factory inspection is conducted with the American perspective in mind as the sector has matured without adequate plans in three decades'

BTRC and mobile operators’ representatives didn’t sign the NBR report although they were a part of the re-veri� cation process

B2 Stock Sunday, February 16, 2014DHAKA TRIBUNE

Pro� t-booking breaks six-week rallyn Tribune Report

Pro� t booking has sent stock mar-kets to red in the past week ended Thursday, breaking the rally for six previous weeks.

The benchmark DSEX lost nearly 86 points or 1.8% to 4,759 after the end of the week when the blue chip index DS30 rose 14 points or 0.9% to 1,696.

The Shariah Index DSES declined fractionally 0.7 points to 995. The Chittagong Stock Exchange (CSE) Selective Categories Index, CSCX, was down 161 points or 1.7% to close the week at 9,362.

Market participation at DSE remained sluggish during the past week with the total turnover going down by 1% to Tk2,900 crore and the daily turnover averaged at Tk580 crore, a drop of 21% over the previous week’s daily average of Tk721 crore.

Out of 302 issues traded, 48 ad-vanced, 244 declined, six remained unchanged and 4 were not traded.

“Market has observed a correc-tion phase in the week. This seems

to be a natural pro� t booking as market is standing over 13% return since the beginning of 2014,” said Lanka Bangla Securities in its week-ly market analysis.

It said average turnover declined in the past week by 21%, indicating that selling pressure is getting thin-ner at lower prices.

According to Bangladesh Bank, banking system has now Tk90,100 crore of excess liquidity, which is piling up as investment proposals were low in 2013 due to unfavorable business environment caused by political unrest.

“This excess liquidity is expected to lower interest rates further in the economy. So we can expect capital gain from bond holdings of � nancial institutions which are considered as held for trading securities,” said Lanka Bangla

The week’s top gaining sector was pharmaceuticals that rallied over 4%, followed by life insurance 3% and, fuel and power 2%. Conversely, top losing sector were IT that fell more than 6%, followed by service and real estate 4.8%, general insurance 4.6%, bank 4.5% and textile 4.4%.

IDLC Investment said reverting previous week’s gain, the past week was halted by pro� t booking and in-vestors’ cautious stance.

“However, portfolio re-balancing prevailed supported by the expecta-tions of upcoming corporate decla-rations.”

The top traded stocks were Square pharmaceuticals, Bangla-desh Submarine Cable Company Limited, Meghna Petroleum, Olym-pic Industries, Jamuna Oil, Delta Life Insurance and Grameenphone. l

Weekly news from trade serverDividend/AGMGP: The Board of Directors has recom-mended 50% � nal cash dividend (i.e. total 140% cash dividend for the year 2013 inclusive of 90% Interim cash dividend which has already been paid) for the year ended on December 31, 2013. Date of AGM: 09.04.2014, Time: 10:00 AM, Venue: Bashundhara Convention Center-2, Block-C, Bashundhara R/A, Baridhara, Dhaka-1229. Record date: 20.02.2014. The Company has also reported net pro� t after tax of Tk. 14,701.57 million, EPS of Tk. 10.89, NAV per share of Tk. 23.06 and NOCFPS of Tk. 27.46 for the year ended on December 31, 2013.NCCBLMF1: The Trustee of the fund has declared 10% cash dividend for the year ended on December 31, 2013. Record date: 24.02.2014. The fund has reported net prof-it of Tk. 111,225,788.00 and earnings per unit (EPU) of Tk. 1.0251 for the year ended on December 31, 2013.GEMINISEA: (Q1): As per un-audited quarterly accounts for the 1st quarter ended on 31st December 2013 (Oct'13 to Dec'13), the Company has reported net pro� t/(loss) after tax of Tk. 1.77 million with EPS of Tk. 1.61 as against Tk. (3.60) million and Tk. (3.27) respectively for the same period of the previous year. Accumulated pro� t/(loss) of the Company was Tk. (16.43) million as on 31.12.2013 resulting total shareholders' equity stands at Tk. (4.50) million.HRTEX: (Q1): As per un-audited quarterly accounts for the 1st quarter ended on 31st December 2013 (Oct'13 to Dec'13), the Com-pany has reported net pro� t after tax of Tk. 9.91 million with EPS of Tk. 0.39 as against Tk. 10.78 million and Tk. 0.43 respectively for the same period of the previous year.MAKSONSPIN: (Q1): As per un-audited

quarterly accounts for the 1st quarter ended on 31st December 2013 (Oct'13 to Dec'13), the Company has reported net pro� t after tax of Tk. 35.13 million with basic EPS of Tk. 0.17 as against Tk. 5.16 million and Tk. 0.03 respectively for the same period of the pre-vious year. However, considering proposed bonus share @ 5% for the year 2013, restat-ed basic EPS will be Tk. 0.16 as on 31.12.2013 and Tk. 0.02 as on 31.12.2012.

Audited/unaudited Financial Reports:ENVOYTEX: (Q1): As per un-audited quarterly accounts for the 1st quarter ended on 31st December 2013 (Oct'13 to Dec'13), the Company has reported pro� t after tax of Tk. 39.36 million with EPS of Tk. 0.28 as against Tk. 105.63 million and Tk. 0.75 (restated) respectively for the same period of the previous year.AFC Agro Biotech Limited: (Q3): The Company started its commercial operation on 07 October 2012, as stated in the pro-spectus. The Company has reported that its net pro� t after tax has stood at Tk. 19.07 million and basic EPS is Tk. 0.50 for the 3 (three) months ended on 30 September 2013 (July 2013- September 2013). It is to be noted that basic EPS has been calculated based on the weighted average Pre-IPO paid-up number of shares i.e. 38,000,000 shares. However, considering Post-IPO 50,000,000 number of shares the Com-pany's basic EPS for the 3 (three) months ended on 30 September 2013 would be Tk. 0.38. Whereas for the period of 9 (nine) months (Jan 2013 to Sep 2013) ended on 30 September 2013 pro� t after tax was Tk. 57.59 million and basic EPS was Tk. 1.52. It is to be noted that the said EPS has been cal-culated based on weighted average Pre-IPO

paid-up number of shares i.e. 38,000,000 shares. However, considering Post-IPO 50,000,000 number of shares, Company's basic EPS would be Tk. 1.15 for 9 (nine) months ended on 30 September 2013 (Jan 2013 to Sep 2013) and NAV would be Tk. 11.04 as on 30 September 2013.

Fixed Assets/Right/Investment:GENNEXT: The Company has further informed that the subscription period for rights issue will be from 18.03.2014 to 09.04.2014. Record date for entitlement of rights share: 25.02.2014. The purpose of issuing Rights Share is to pay o� debt and expand the production capacity.DELTALIFE: The Company has informed that the Board of Directors of the Company has decided to establish two fully owned subsidiary companies namely (1) DLIC Asset Management Company Limited with an Authorized and Paid-up Capital of Tk. 50.00 crore and Tk. 10.00 crore respective-ly and (2) DLIC Financial Services Limited with an Authorized and Paid-up Capital of Tk. 50.00 crore and Tk. 25.00 crore respectively subject to the approval from the Insurance Development and Regulatory Authority (IDRA) and Bangladesh Securities & Exchange Commission (BSEC).DBH: The Company has informed that the Board of Directors of the Company has authorized the Management to negotiate and complete the necessary formalities to procure a � oor space as follows: Floor space measuring 2,075 sft. at the 4th � oor of Union Nahar Square, Plot # 19, Sonar-gaon Janapath Road, Sector # 13, Uttara Moderl Town, Dhaka at a total cost of Tk. 3,01,50,000.00 (excluding registration expenses).

CSE LOSERS

Company Closing (% change)

Aver-age (%

change)

Closing average

Weekly closing

Weekly high

Weekly low

Turnover in million

Latest EPS

Latest PE

Eastern InsurA -11.43 -11.43 43.40 43.40 49.00 40.10 0.056 2.60 16.7Hakkani P& Paper -B -11.21 -10.97 28.58 28.50 31.00 28.40 0.358 0.28 102.1GSP Finance-A -11.19 -11.49 26.42 26.20 29.50 26.20 2.446 1.34 19.7Union Capital -A -10.98 -10.33 30.04 30.00 34.60 29.60 3.036 0.28 107.3Prime Islami Life -A -9.97 -9.72 116.50 116.50 128.00 116.50 0.149 4.95 23.5Kay & Que (BD) -Z -9.91 -9.83 20.00 20.00 22.20 20.00 0.064 -0.89 -vePrimeFin. 1st MF-A -9.75 -10.35 21.30 21.30 24.10 21.30 1.729 1.00 21.3IFIC Bank - A -9.31 -9.93 34.38 34.10 37.50 34.00 12.086 4.33 7.9Islamic Finance-A -9.17 -8.32 19.94 19.80 21.50 19.70 5.918 0.87 22.9AB Bank - A -9.12 -9.29 31.23 30.90 33.40 30.80 15.519 1.65 18.9

DSE LOSERS

Company Closing (% change)

Aver-age (%

change)

Closing average

Weekly closing

Weekly high

Weekly low

Turnover in million

Latest EPS

Latest PE

Stylecraft -A -14.00 -14.00 995.00 995.00 1084.70 995.00 0.310 47.83 20.8GSP Finance-A -11.19 -11.30 26.38 26.20 30.00 25.50 55.206 1.34 19.7Desh Garments -B -10.86 -11.47 74.46 73.90 83.70 73.20 19.688 1.18 63.1Peoples Insur -A -10.46 -8.23 35.70 35.10 39.20 33.00 33.036 2.20 16.2PrimeFin. 1st MF-A -10.13 -11.31 21.33 21.30 24.40 20.80 67.146 1.00 21.3Libra Infusions-A -9.56 -9.43 468.33 467.60 520.00 441.70 2.875 3.04 154.1Legacy Footwear -A -9.52 -9.75 36.19 36.10 40.60 35.90 15.505 0.36 100.5Union Capital -A -9.28 -10.05 30.16 30.30 33.40 29.00 26.536 0.28 107.7IFIC Bank - A -9.07 -10.21 34.29 34.10 37.80 31.20 147.732 4.33 7.9AB Bank - A -8.85 -9.56 31.11 30.90 35.50 28.50 155.748 1.65 18.9

CSE TURNOVER LEADERS

Company Volume shares

Value in million

% of total turnover

Weekly closing

Price change

Weekly opening

Weekly high

Weekly low

Weekly average

BD Submarine Cable-A 863,193 178.56 7.15 217.80 16.47 187.00 225.40 189.90 220.71AFC AgroBiotech-N 1,708,500 107.95 4.33 60.30 0.00 0.00 68.80 53.00 61.09Square Pharma -A 392,893 102.53 4.11 266.50 7.29 248.40 270.50 250.00 266.97Appollo Ispat CL -N 2,399,800 76.00 3.05 31.80 -2.45 32.60 33.00 30.10 31.23Grameenphone-A 341,800 70.82 2.84 206.90 -1.57 210.20 210.10 195.00 206.66Aftab Auto.-A 723,909 69.18 2.77 92.20 -1.39 93.50 99.70 92.00 92.56Delta Life Insu. -A 224,500 60.97 2.44 279.90 6.63 262.50 283.00 262.00 275.50BSC-A 126,080 60.43 2.42 486.00 3.01 471.80 494.80 462.00 489.70aamra technologies-A 1,441,755 59.72 2.39 39.60 -7.91 43.00 44.00 39.30 39.88UCBL - A 2,029,310 58.35 2.34 27.70 -6.73 29.70 30.00 27.60 27.96

DSE TURNOVER LEADERS

Company Volume shares

Value in million

% of total turnover

Weekly closing

Price change

Weekly opening

Weekly high

Weekly low

Weekly average

Square Pharma -A 6,754,276 1760.52 6.08 266.20 7.30 248.10 270.00 237.00 266.42BD Submarine Cable-A 7,078,058 1450.50 5.01 216.60 15.89 186.90 230.00 169.50 220.66Meghna Petroleum -A 4,091,893 1175.98 4.06 292.10 4.96 278.30 297.50 254.00 293.32Olympic Ind. -A 5,675,801 1113.20 3.84 203.90 9.86 185.60 207.90 174.00 204.02Jamuna Oil -A 3,742,955 880.67 3.04 237.10 2.73 230.80 242.10 215.00 238.43Delta Life Insu. -A 2,951,550 800.19 2.76 278.70 6.25 262.30 282.80 262.00 275.21Grameenphone-A 3,146,200 653.32 2.26 207.20 -1.33 210.00 211.40 199.00 207.00Padma Oil Co. -A 1,819,619 614.59 2.12 334.70 1.76 328.90 345.00 315.00 337.17LankaBangla Fin. -A 8,421,950 609.40 2.10 70.10 -4.23 73.20 75.60 65.80 70.47BD Building Systems -A 6,348,200 458.54 1.58 74.20 5.85 70.10 74.70 63.00 72.99

CSE GAINERS

Company Closing (% change)

Aver-age (%

change)

Closing average

Weekly closing

Weekly high

Weekly low

Turnover in million

Latest EPS

Latest PE

BD Submarine Cable-A 16.47 21.80 220.71 217.80 225.40 189.90 178.562 3.28 67.37th ICB M F-A 16.12 16.12 85.00 85.00 85.00 85.00 0.043 13.84 6.1NCCBL Mutual Fund-1-A 15.79 15.79 11.00 11.00 11.30 11.00 0.149 1.03 10.7DESCO Ltd. -A 15.40 11.97 67.73 69.70 70.10 56.50 22.409 1.12 60.5Apex Tannery -A 10.56 12.52 176.89 174.80 183.00 158.20 14.399 4.86 36.4Olympic Ind. -A 9.89 11.12 204.95 204.50 208.80 187.50 47.262 6.90 29.7Rangpur Foundry -A 8.00 7.66 108.00 108.00 108.00 108.00 0.108 3.03 35.6National Life I -A 7.46 7.47 350.00 350.00 350.00 316.60 3.871 12.46 28.16th ICB M F-A 7.43 8.26 65.56 65.10 67.00 59.50 0.163 6.54 10.0Square Pharma -A 7.29 8.68 266.97 266.50 270.50 250.00 102.527 11.36 23.5

DSE GAINERS

Company Closing (% change)

Aver-age (%

change)

Closing average

Weekly closing

Weekly high

Weekly low

Turnover in million

Latest EPS

Latest PE

BD Submarine Cable-A 15.89 21.26 220.66 216.60 230.00 169.50 1450.504 3.28 67.3DESCO Ltd. -A 14.93 11.66 67.69 69.30 70.20 57.00 256.077 1.12 60.4GeminiSeaFood-Z 11.95 11.66 159.30 159.30 159.30 130.80 0.559 6.44 24.7Apex Tannery -A 11.30 12.63 175.23 173.30 179.90 150.00 145.245 4.86 36.1NCCBL Mutual Fund-1-A 10.53 13.04 10.66 10.50 13.00 9.10 47.718 1.03 10.3Olympic Ind. -A 9.86 10.89 204.02 203.90 207.90 174.00 1113.197 6.90 29.6National Life I -A 8.34 6.11 343.56 347.00 348.90 300.00 67.017 12.46 27.6Square Pharma -A 7.30 8.60 266.42 266.20 270.00 237.00 1760.523 11.36 23.5ACI Formulations-A 7.07 6.48 88.91 89.30 91.40 83.30 56.331 2.13 41.7Rupali Life Insur.-A 7.05 3.48 106.22 107.80 110.00 90.00 62.446 5.33 19.9

SECTORAL TURNOVER SUMMARY

Sector DSE CSE TotalMillion Taka % change Million Taka % change Million Taka % change

Bank 2921.24 10.09 318.84 12.73 3240.08 10.30NBFI 1616.02 5.58 136.87 5.47 1752.89 5.57Investment 642.37 2.22 28.50 1.14 670.87 2.13Engineering 2676.44 9.24 338.17 13.51 3014.61 9.58Food & Allied 1724.41 5.96 101.53 4.06 1825.94 5.80Fuel & Power 4437.33 15.32 220.65 8.81 4657.99 14.81Jute 7.43 0.03 0.00 0.00 7.43 0.02Textile 2320.72 8.01 207.86 8.30 2528.59 8.04Pharma & Chemical 4452.18 15.38 365.73 14.61 4817.91 15.31Paper & Packaging 3.07 0.01 2.63 0.11 5.70 0.02Service 155.67 0.54 18.10 0.72 173.77 0.55Leather 427.80 1.48 27.91 1.11 455.71 1.45Ceramic 322.29 1.11 42.53 1.70 364.82 1.16Cement 1150.72 3.97 59.31 2.37 1210.03 3.85Information Technology 425.16 1.47 73.62 2.94 498.78 1.59General Insurance 580.04 2.00 21.43 0.86 601.47 1.91Life Insurance 1894.72 6.54 97.03 3.88 1991.76 6.33Telecom 2103.82 7.27 249.38 9.96 2353.21 7.48Travel & Leisure 515.07 1.78 80.89 3.23 595.96 1.89Miscellaneous 574.64 1.98 112.64 4.50 687.29 2.18Debenture 5.66 0.02 0.13 0.01 5.79 0.02

Weekly capital market highlightsDSE Broad Index : 4759.32706 (-) 1.77% ▼

DSE - 30 Index : 1696.65731 (+) 0.88% ▲

CSE All Share Index: 14759.6558 (-) 1.78% ▼

CSE - 30 Index : 12520.6525 (-) 1.08% ▼

CSE Selected Index : 9362.0009 (-) 1.69% ▼

DSE key features February 09-13, 2014Turnover (Million Taka)

28,956.80

Turnover (Volume)

532,035,603

Number of Contract 598,298

Traded Issues 298

Issue Gain (Avg. Price Basis)

48

Issue Loss (Avg. Price Basis)

247

Unchanged Issue (Avg. Price Basis)

3

Market Capital Equity (Billion. Tk.)

2,289.33

Market Capital Equity (Billion US$)

27.75

CSE key features February 09-13, 2014Turnover (Million Taka) 2,496.95

Turnover (Volume) 55,534,801

Number of Contract 89,831

Traded Issues 253

Issue Gain (Avg. Price Basis)

45

Issue Loss (Avg. Price Basis)

204

Unchanged Issue (Avg. Price Basis)

3

Market Capital Equity (Billion. Tk.)

2,166.34

Market Capital Equity (Billion US$)

26.26

Prepared exclusively for Dhaka Tribune by Business Information Automation Service Line (BIASL), on the basis of information collected from daily stock quotations and audited reports of the listed companies. High level of caution has been taken to collect and present the above information and data. The publisher will not take any responsibility if any body uses this information and data for his/her investment decision. For any query please email to biasl@bol-online.com or call 01552153562 or go to www.biasl.net

ANALYSTMarket has observed a correction phase in the week. This seems to be a natural pro� t booking as market is standing over 13% return since the beginning of 2014

-2%

-1%

0%

1%

2%

3%

4%

5%

6%

03 10 17

24 31 07 14 21 28

04 11

NBFI Index DSE BroadIndex

CHANGE OF DSE BROAD INDEX VS SECTORAL INDEX

'Reverting previous week’s gain, the past week was halted by pro� t booking and investors’ cautious stance'

B3BusinessDHAKA TRIBUNE Sunday, February 16, 2014

The Hong Kong and Shanghai Banking Corporation Limited recently appointed Sabbir Ahmed as its head of retail banking and wealth management in Bangladesh. His new role in the bank is e� ective from today

Pizza Inn launched its third branch at Banani, Dhaka on Thursday. Sayed Anowaruzzamn, chairperson, Eng Sayeed Ahmed, managing director and other directors of Mohammad Food and Alights were present at the ceremony

Kurmitola Golf Club began its three-day long ‘Square Cup Golf Tournament 2014’ at the club’s premises in the Dhaka on Friday. The tournament was inaugurated by Lieutenant General Mollah Fazle Akbar, ndc, psc, comdt, National Defence College

Four CSE directors elected n Tribune Report

Chittagong Stock Exchange (CSE) yes-terday elected four directors from six contestants. This is the � rst election after the demutualised stock exchange.

The elected directors are Mirza Salman Ispahani of Ispahani Secu-ruties, Khairul Anam of Lanka Bangla Securuties, Mohammad Mohiuddin of Island Securities and Shamsul Islam of Berich Securities.

Ispahani bagged the highest number of 92 votes, followed by Anam 86 votes, Mohiuddin 58 votes and Islam 57 votes. Chairman of the CSE will be elected from its seven independent directors approved by Bangladesh Securities and Exchange Commission earlier.

The BSEC on Thursday picked seven independent directors for the Chit-

tagong Stock Exchange from a list sub-mitted by the CSE.

The regulator selected former NBR chairman Abdul Majid, Chittagong Uni-versity professor Ayub Islam, former CSE director Moinul Islam Mahmud, former Bangladesh Garment Manu-facturers and Exporters Association president Md Sha� ul Islam Mohiuddin, BGMEA � rst vice-president Nasiruddin Ahmed Chowdhury, Institute of Char-tered Accountants Bangladesh presi-dent Showkat Hossain and former IC-MAB chairman Momtaz Uddin Ahmed.

The new board will be comprised of 13 members, four from its existing shareholders, seven from indepen-dent directors, CSE chief executive of-� cer and one from strategic investor, according to the Demutualisation Act 2013. l

New DSE chairman elected n Tribune Report

Retired Supreme Court judge Justice Siddiqur Rahman has been elected chairman of the Dhaka Stock Exchange for a three-year term.

He became the � rst chairman of the DSE after its demutualization – a way of separating management of the bourses from ownership.  

The 13-member new DSE board elected him as the chairman at its � rst meeting held on Friday.  

The board is comprised of newly elected four directors, BSEC approved seven independent directors, DSE chief executive o� cer and one from strate-gic investor in line with the Demutuali-sation Act 2013.

Besides Siddiqur Rahman, other six independent directors are former sec-retary Waliul Islam, member of Univer-sity Grants Commission Abul Hashem, BUET Professor Dr M Kaykobad, former ICMAB President Ruhul Amin, Briga-dier General Mujibur Rahman and FBC-CI Senior Vice-President Monowara Hakim Ali.

The four elected directors are Shakil Rizvi of Shakil Rizvi Stock, Khwaja Gh-ulam Rasul of Khwaja Equity Services, Mohammad Shahjahan of Jahan Secu-rities and Sharif Anwar Hossain of Sha-hidullah Securities.

A law on demutualisation was passed in parliament on April 29 last year with a promise to bring transpar-ency in the stock market. l

Politics, Fed could whip up new emerging markets stormn Reuters

A stabilisation in emerging markets af-ter January’s rout may turn out be the calm before the storm if political � are-ups and Fed policies provide the spark for the next round of selling.

Currencies in Turkey, South Africa, Hungary and Russia, which su� ered violent sell-o� s over the past month, have recovered slightly, partly because central banks have fought back via in-terest rates hikes or exchange rate in-terventions.

Investors also appear more sanguine about the US Federal Reserve’s plan to steadily withdraw monetary stimulus, a stance con� rmed by its chair Janet Yellen this week. But the next stress points are already emerging.

Some investors are bracing for the “April tipping point”, when the Fed’s stimulus withdrawal in real terms is expected to start having a more mate-rial impact on the economy.

“Another catalyst will be political uncertainty, with many of the de� cit countries facing elections in 2014,” said Gautam Chadda, director of invest-ment consulting at RBC Wealth Man-agement.

That includes the capital-hungry “Fragile Five” countries, voters in all of which are due to pass judgment on their governments this year.

“Markets don’t like uncertainty and there is a lot of political uncertainty out there,” said Chadda, who expects pres-sure on emerging markets to return as the Fed scales back its asset-purchases over the course of the year.

And if turbulence has ebbed in mar-kets such as Turkey and India, it ap-pears to be spreading to other parts of the developing world.

For instance, markets in commodity exporting Nigeria, which is sensitive to China’s growth and until recently a top frontier market investment destina-tions, have tumbled.

The naira has hit two-year lows after President Goodluck Jonathan sacked four cabinet members ahead of next year’s general election, and its weak-ness has been only partly stemmed by central bank intervention.

A weaker currency worsens the in-� ation outlook for Nigeria which de-pends on imports for almost 80% of goods sold in the country.

The cedi currency of another Afri-

can commodity exporter Ghana, has also fallen to record lows.

Falling reservesNigeria is also an example of an emerg-ing economy that is seeing a steady depletion in its hard currency reserves - its cash pile has fallen 7% over the past year.

Reserves fell in 11 out of 17 key emerging economies, including Russia, South Africa and Indonesia, in the year to January, as once-buoyant invest-ment in� ows dwindle and trade with a slowing China declines.

That in turn undermines the ability of central banks to support currencies under pressure. Michael Howell, man-aging director of CrossBorder Capital, said recent poor economic data out of China is a reminder for investors of the sensitivity of many emerging markets to the world’s second-biggest economy.

“Is the crisis over? It’s not. Real ex-change rates of emerging markets have to come down further,” Howell said.

“Which banana skin are you going to slip on? I believe it would be weak economic data coming out of China or signs of FX reserves to start falling sig-ni� cantly.”

He noted that Britain and the United States had recovered faster from Great Depression in the 1930s than France, which prioritised monetary discipline.

That could set the stage for a round of beggar-thy-neighbour competitive currency devaluations in emerging markets. Kazakhstan may already have started it, with its 19% tenge devalua-tion this week. That move was motivat-ed by weakness in the rouble of Russia, Kazakhstan’s key trade partner.

“The shining lesson from the 1930s is that those countries that devalued currencies � rst got out quickly. (Ka-zakhstan) is following the script,” How-ell said.

Tipping pointThe Federal Reserve’s winding-down stimulus, which began in December, has so far not signi� cantly driven up US bond yields, which remain below levels seen in May-June last year.

But it may simply be that the real ef-fect of tapering has not kicked in yet, because as the economy recovers and the US budget de� cit shrinks, the Trea-sury is issuing less debt.

Stephen Jen, managing partner of SLJ Macro Partners says that until the Fed’s monthly bond-buying falls below $55 bn, tapering will not have a real im-pact, relative to total bond sales.

“The Fed’s tapering will only catch up to the Treasury’s tapering by April or so,” Jen said. “This may help explain why equity prices have been so well supported in Q4 2013 and early 2014, despite the Fed’s decision to taper.” l

Toshiba says to invest $500min India over� ve yearsn Reuters

Japan’s Toshiba Corp said on Friday it plans to invest 30bn rupees in India over the next � ve years to expand its businesses in the country.

Toshiba will position India as a stra-tegic business hub in its thermal power, energy equipment, water treatment and software development businesses, Chief Executive O� cer Hisao Tanaka said in a statement.

The company said it is targeting sales of 180 bn rupees from India by 2016/17, about seven times from the current level. It expects to employ 8,000 people in India by then. l

Toshiba's Chief Executive O� cer Hisao Tanaka addresses a news conference in New Delhi REUTERS

Stronger-than-expected Germany, France nudge up euro zone growthn Reuters

Slightly stronger-than-expected growth in Germany and France pushed the euro zone’s recovery up a gear in the fourth quarter and o� ered potential for a more robust 2014, albeit with risks.

Data on Friday showed the euro zone economy rose by 0.3% in the three month to December compared with the previous quarter. This slightly exceeded market expectations for a 0.2% expansion.

The 9.5tn euro economy had already emerged in the second quarter from its longest recession since the introduc-tion of the single currency, but record high unemployment, external eco-nomic risks, � scal austerity and low in-� ation have kept a lid on the rebound.

The EU’s statistics o� ce will publish a detailed breakdown on March 5, but analysts said the fourth-quarter growth was mainly driven by exports and in-vestment.

A positive signal was that for the � rst time in almost three years all of the six largest euro zone economies re-corded quarterly expansions.

Germany, the European’s largest economy, saw its growth accelerating to 0.4% on the quarter thanks to a rise in exports and capital investment, up from 0.3% in the previous three months. The French economy expanded by 0.3% and statistics o� ce INSEE revised up the third quarter � gure to � at from -0.1%.

That meant France grew 0.3% over the course of last year, more than the government’s estimate of 0.1%.

Analysts nonetheless were cautious.“It is still going to be far from plain

sailing for the euro zone in 2014 as a number of signi� cant growth con-straints remain,” said Howard Archer, chief European economist at IHS.

Martin van Vliet, an analyst with ING, said a sustained recovery was “not yet assured”.

Italy, now awaiting a new prime minister with Enrico Letta due to re-sign having been forced out by his own Democratic Party, dragged itself back to growth for the � rst time since mid-2011. Its economy expanded marginally by 0.1%. Over the whole of 2013, GDP contracted by 1.9%, the ISTAT statistics o� ce said.

Italy has been one of the world’s most sluggish economies for more than a decade. Growth has averaged less than zero over the last 12 years. In 2014, the government forecasts growth of 1.1%.

The German Statistics O� ce saw “mixed signals” from the domestic economy, which has driven growth throughout most of the year, with pub-lic expenditure stable and private con-sumption slightly below the level of the previous quarter.

“Capital investment developed posi-tively,” the Statistics O� ce said. “How-ever, a strong reduction in inventories put the brakes on economic growth.”

The German Economy Ministry said on Wednesday it expected gross do-mestic product (GDP) growth of 1.8% in 2014 - more than four times faster than in 2013 as a whole.

“The rise in capital investment is very positive and signals that the Ger-man economy is starting the new y ear well,” said Johannes Mayr, an econo-mist at Bayern LB.

Ecb watchingThe European Central Bank kept policy steady earlier this month with Presi-dent Mario Draghi declaring more in-formation was needed before deciding on any action.

He cited fresh ECB sta� forecasts which will be ready for the March poli-cy meeting and the fourth quarter GDP numbers.

Spain has already reported fourth quarter growth of 0.3%, its second suc-cessive quarter of expansion. The gov-ernment now expects growth this year of close to 1%, compared with an o� -cial forecast of 0.7%.

The Dutch economy grew by a solid 0.7% on the quarter, well above the mar-ket consensus. Austrian GDP rose 0.3%.

The French government expects growth will accelerate this year to at least 0.9%, driven by a rebound in com-pany investment.

A breakdown of the fourth quarter French � gures showed growth was driven by the � rst rise in corporate in-vestment in two years. Public invest-ment was even stronger and household spending also recovered.

Finance Minister Pierre Moscovici nonetheless described the economy’s strength as “unsatisfactory” and said faster growth was needed to create more jobs with unemployment at nearly 11%.

The growth, however, now needs to spill over into a decent job creation, a crucial link the recovery was missing so far, analysts say.

“Moreover, both the relatively strong euro and the slowdown in emerging market economies are clear downward risks to the growth out-look,” ING’s van Vliet said, adding he expected the ECB to stay cautious.

“That said, today’s better-than-ex-pected GDP data does provide the ECB with a little more con� dence about the recovery and hence reduce the chances of a March 6th ECB rate cut.”l

Japan PM keen to cut corporate tax rate n Reuters

Prime Minister Shinzo Abe is deter-mined to cut Japan’s corporate tax rate, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga said, a step experts say could boost the global competitiveness of Japanese companies and make the country more attractive to foreign investment.

Suga, who serves as the govern-ment’s top spokesman and is one of Abe’s most trusted aides, also said Japan’s participation in talks on a US-led free trade pact, the Trans-Paci� c Partnership, was a vital part of Abe’s growth strategy, the “Third Arrow” in his “Abenomics” policy that also in-cludes hyper-easy monetary policy and � scal spending.

“The prime minister has made a de� nite statement regarding a reduc-tion in the corporate tax rate,” Suga told Reuters in an interview. “We want to achieve this.”

Finance ministry o� cials have ex-pressed concern that cutting the corpo-rate tax rate, considered high by global standards at about 35% for national and local taxes combined, would worsen the public debt, which is already the worst among advanced nations.

But Suga said: “Whatever the � -nance ministry says, the government policy will not change. We will con-sider what will happen to government � nances if the corporate tax rate is low-ered, but the prime minister has said all along that a reduction is necessary. We want to do that properly.”

Abe took o� ce in December 2012 pledging to revive the economy and end the de� ation that has plagued it for a decade and a half.

Suga said that nearly 14 months later Japan was on track to escape de� ation.

“Without a doubt, we have been able to create the atmosphere such that we can escape from the de� ation that has continued for 15 years,” he said.

“I think that we are a cabinet that will achieve the two extremely di� cult (goals) of escaping de� ation and rebuild-ing the government � nances,” he added.

He said the real test would come af-ter the government raised the 5% sales tax to 8% in April.

“Without a doubt, the critical time awaits us after the sales tax rise,” he said. Another rise to 10% is scheduled from October 2015.

Suga said it was up to the Bank of Japan to decide whether further mon-etary easing would be needed if the economy struggles after the April sales tax hike.

“With regard to monetary policy, Bank of Japan Governor (Haruhiko) Ku-roda shares the Abe government’s way of thinking so we want to trust him and leave it to Governor Kuroda.”

The Bank of Japan launched an in-tense burst of monetary stimulus last April, when it pledged to accelerate in� ation to 2% in about two years with aggressive asset purchases. l

Nigeria is also an example of an emerging economy that is seeing a steady depletion in its hard currency reserves

'Capital investment developed positively, however, a strong reduction in inventories put the brakes on economic growth'

Oil, gold prices hit multi-month highsn AFP, London

Oil and gold prices hit multi-month peaks this week on improved demand prospects in the world’s two biggest economies, the United States and Chi-na, and owing to a weaker dollar.

Global crude prices rallied on im-proving US demand prospects.

On Wednesday, US crude struck the highest level for four months at $100.37 a barrel, while Brent achieved the steepest peak since the start of year at around the $110 a barrel mark.

“Renewed concerns of colder weath-er in the US bolstered support” for New York prices, said Kash Kamal, research analyst at Sucden brokers. l

B4 Back PageDHAKA TRIBUNE Sunday, February 16, 2014

Toyota recalls 260,000 cars in USTwo days after its huge global recall of Prius hybrids, Toyota recalled another 260,000 cars and pickup trucks in the United States Friday for electrical problems involving the brakes. The recall a� ects Toyota Tacomas and Lexus RX350s for the model years 2012 and 2013, and 2012 Rav4s, according to a report by the US National Transportation Safety Board. –AFP

US industrial production falls 0.3% in JanuaryUS industrial output fell 0.3% in January in a surprise downturn, partly due to severe weather in parts of the country last month, the Federal Reserve said Friday. – AFP

European stocks � rm up on eurozone growth data

European stocks advanced cautiously on Friday, boosted by news of recovering economic growth across the eurozone, while dealers tracked fresh political turmoil in Italy. At close, London’s benchmark FTSE 100 index ended the

day just 0.06% higher at 6,663.62 points, Frankfurt’s DAX 30 rose 0.68% to 9,662.40 points, while the CAC 40 in Paris climbed 0.63% to 4,340.14 points, its highest point since September2008.– AFP

French economy grows 0.3% in 2013, mixed signal for HollandeThe French economy turned in slightly � rmer growth than expected last year, expanding by 0.3%, but undershot in the � nal quarter in a mixed message for the beleaguered government. This was a stride ahead of the government’s own estimate that the economy would limp into growth of just 0.1% in 2013. – AFP

Greek recession easing faster than expected, o� cial data showsCrisis-hit Greece took a step closer to re-covery on Friday with o� cial data show-ing that the six-year recession choking the country was easing faster than expected.

Overall, the � gures indicate that Greece has now managed to cut the recession by almost half in the space of one year. – AFP

NEWS IN BRIEF

A dog wears a "Pet� t tag" equipped with 3G and Bluetooth from Japan's largest mobile phone carrier NTT Docomo during a press brie� ng in Tokyo on February 13, 2014. NTT Docomo announced it will start the communication service "Pet� t" in March allowing owners to manage the health and locate the whereabouts of their dog through a tag attached to a collar from a PC or smart phone AFP

World shares head for best week of 2014n Reuters

Evidence of a gradual acceleration in euro zone growth put the region’s shares on course for their best week of the year on Friday and pushed the euro to a three-week high.

As well as the encouraging econom-ic data, which helped take some of the sting out of Thursday’s disappointing US retail and unemployment � gures, investors gave a cautious thumbs up to the latest changeover at the summit of Italian politics.

Stocks  in Milan were Europe’s best performers by some distance, rising 1.1% versus a 0.4% higher pan-Europe-an FTSEuro� rst 300 index. In the debt market, Italian borrowing costs hov-ered near 8-year lows.

Italian centre-left leader Matteo

Renzi forced party rival Enrico Letta to resign as prime minister on Thursday after criticising his government’s fail-ure to pass major reforms.

That means the country faces its third administration in a year, but the hope is the youthful, sharp-talking Renzi can breathe new life into e� orts to streamline the euro zone’s third larg-est economy.

“The appointment of Renzi is seen as something positive. He is a new poli-tician who can take decisive action,” BNP Paribas rate strategist Patrick Jacq said.

“This is not political uncertainty. In fact, the political situation in Italy now is clearer.”

In the currency market, the euro traded at just under $1.37, within touching distance of a three-week high hit earlier in Asia.

Euro zone growth and the positive sentiment towards Italy helped its cause, although a softening dollar on the back of Thursday’s lacklustre data had an equal e� ect.

The mood was buoyed as fourth quarter economic growth in Germany and France marginally exceeded ex-pectations and o� ered hope of a more robust 2014.

The euro zone-wide number is due at 1000 GMT and forecast to show quar-terly growth of 0.2%, though given the performance of the bloc’s top two econ-omies, it may well exceed those bets.

“It (GDP data) will con� rm there is a recovery in train in the euro zone which if you are an equity investor should at the margin bolster your con� -dence that the improvement is for real and sustainable,” said Macquarie Capi-tal strategist Daniel McCormack.

Asian gainsEarly futures prices pointed to subdued end to the week for Wall Street though it, like European shares and MSCI’s 45-country world index, was on course for its best week since the end of De-cember.

Data from both the US and China have been unconvincing recently but the wobbles have been o� set by assur-ances from the Federal Reserve, Euro-pean Central Bank and Bank of Eng-land that their supportive policies will remain in place if needed.

In Asian trading, share markets mostly rose to give MSCI’s broadest index of Asia-Paci� c shares outside Ja-pan its biggest weekly gain since Sep-tember.

Japan’s Nikkei stock average under-performed its counterparts though, tumbling 1.5% for its sixth straight weekly losses as the yen continued to make ground against the weaker dollar.

“Japanese stocks have trouble ad-vancing as overseas investors have become reticent,” said Kenichi Hirano, a strategist at Tachibana Securities in Tokyo.

Dollar softensThe weaker dollar helped point Asian emerging market currencies towards weekly gains as they continued to recover ground after last month’s squalls.

The Indonesian rupiah hit a near 11-week high after data showed that coun-try’s current account de� cit narrowed sharply in the fourth quarter, though both the Russian rouble and Nigerian Naira remained under pressure.

The yield on benchmark 10-year Treasury notes dipped after Thursday’s data but climbed back to just under 2.74% in early European trade, pulling benchmark European German Bund yields in its wake

US yields rallied this week after the US Congress approved an increase in the debt limit and incoming Federal Re-serve Chair Janet Yellen maintained the central bank’s commitment to gradu-ally withdraw its stimulus.

In commodities trading, US crude slipped about 0.2% to $100.13 a barrel after skidding on the previous session’s dismal US data. Brent crude also edged down about 0.1% to $108.40.

Spot gold added about 0.3% in Asian trading to $1,306.90 an ounce, after hit-ting a three-month high of $1,307.80 earlier in the session.

The US data gave gold futures a lift and helped them post their eighth straight gaining session - the longest winning streak since July 2011. lTraders are pictured at their desks in front of the DAX board at the Frankfurt stock exchange REUTERS

World Bank aims to boost lending by 50% over 10 yearsn Reuters

The World Bank hopes to boost its lending by 50% over 10 years by cutting costs, loosening a restriction on how much it can lend, and charging richer nations higher fees for some services, several people familiar with the matter said.

The bank’s board signed o� on the plan to raise lending by $100bn this week, and the details are supposed to be worked out ahead of the spring meetings of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund in April, said the sources, who were not autho-rized to speak publicly.

The bank’s current loan portfolio is around $200bn.

The World Bank, a poverty-� ghting institution based in Washington, has been undergoing its � rst major stra-tegic realignment since 1996 to make it more e� cient and attuned to what countries need.

Under the new strategy, the bank said it was seeking ways to boost its overall lending portfolio in order to keep itself relevant amid greater com-petition for development funds.

Middle-income countries, including the bank’s � ve biggest borrowers -- Chi-na, Brazil, Turkey, India and Indonesia -- can rely more on private funding and bilateral loans as they grow.

But the bank is betting that these countries, which still have deep pock-ets of poverty, want access to its advice and experience in areas like the envi-ronment and infrastructure. The bank also o� ers lower rates than the private sector.

The $100bn lending boost would come speci� cally from the IBRD, or the International Bank for Reconstruc-tion and Development, the World Bank arm that focuses on reducing poverty in middle-income countries, two of the sources said.

The IBRD gets contributions from each of its 187 member countries. But the World Bank hopes to � nance the higher lending itself, including by low-ering its loan to equity ratio.

The World Bank also plans to cut $400m from its administrative budget over the next three years to be able to provide more to its client countries, the bank’s chief � nancial o� cer told Re-uters in October. l

India’s � nance minister seen walking budget tightrope as economy slowsn Reuters

India’s � nance minister will be walk-ing a tightrope when he presents an interim budget for the coming � scal year tomorrow, doling out more funds to woo voters and tax cuts to support industry while projecting a lower � scal de� cit before elections.

Asia’s third-largest economy is fac-ing its worst economic slowdown in nearly a decade, with shrinking manu-facturing, slower jobs growth and high in� ation limiting the government’s ability to o� er sops to voters or compa-nies to boost growth.

Opinion polls predict defeat for the Congress-led ruling alliance in elections due by May amid widespread discontent with its mismanagement of the economy, high in� ation and corruption scandals.

O� cials say Finance Minister P. Chidambaram is likely to make a last-ditch attempt to win back voters by an-nouncing more funds for health, rural jobs, roads and food subsidies, and to speak about the government’s achieve-ments in the last 10 years.

Chidambaram will have slightly more manoeuvring room after an auc-tion of telecommunications spectrum which ended on Thursday brought in a much higher-than-expected $9.85bn in bids. The government will get at least $3bn of that upfront in the current � scal year, with the rest spread out until 2026.

In an election year, India presents an interim budget to parliament for ap-proval for planned expenditure for three

to four months, but leaves the next gov-ernment to take major policy steps in the full-year budget after the polls.

Chidambaram is expected to cut factory-gate duties on products like au-tos to support the manufacturing sec-tor, extend an interest subsidy on bank loans to exporters, farmers, and o� er tax concessions for poorer regions.

Economy losing steamIndustrial output has fallen 0.1% in the � rst nine months of 2013/14 � scal year, and annual car sales declined by about 5%.

Since taking charge last August, Chi-dambaram has taken many steps such as reducing spending and gold imports to rein in the � scal and current account de� cit that helped stave o� the threat of credit rating downgrades last year.

But he has made limited headway in taming persistently high in� ation and shoring up economic growth.

The economy is projected to grow by 4.9% for the current � scal year end-ing in March, much lower than the more than 9% growth seen before the 2008 global � nancial crisis. Annual retail in-� ation remains uncomfortably near 9%.

Chidambaram is likely to project

near 6% GDP growth and a � scal de� cit target of 4.2% of gross domestic prod-uct for coming 2014/15 � scal year.

He is expected to report a � scal de� -cit of nearly 4.8% of GDP for the cur-rent � scal year, helped by sharp spend-ing cuts, higher receipts from the sale of telecoms spectrum and dividends from state � rms.

“We will surprise everyone on the � scal de� cit numbers,” a senior � nance ministry o� cial told Reuters.

“The government is expected to cut budgeted expenditure by 550-650bn rupees in sectors like roads, metro rail, defense and power sectors to meet the de� cit target,” said another govern-ment source.

It also may defer oil, fertilizer and other subsidies worth nearly 1tn ru-pees ($16.10bn) to the next � scal year, he said, adding the � nal � gures could be higher, and would be known only at the end of � scal year on March 31.

Both sources declined to be identi-� ed because they were not authorized to speak about budget numbers.

However, the oil, fertilizer and food subsidies are likely to be bud-geted at about 2% of GDP for next � s-

cal year, compared with 2.21tn rupees ($35.59bn) budgeted subsidies for this � scal, the second source said.

The next government may revise these numbers when it presents the full-year budget in June or July.

O� cials say the � nance ministry has rejected the power ministry’s proposal to grant an annual 250 billion subsidy for gas-based power plants to cushion customers as natural gas prices are set to almost double from April 1.

However, the railways, defense, health and other ministries have been assured of more funds in the budget.

Deferring burdenAnalysts and the central bank are wor-ried that by deferring a large amount of subsidies to the next � scal year, Chid-ambaram may harm growth prospects.

“The government should avoid de-ferring release of funds for expenses that have already been incurred, to prevent tightening of systemic liquidity and fur-ther harm to sluggish growth,” said Aditi Nayar, an economist at ICRA, the Indian arm of credit rating agency Moody’s.

The central bank has asked the gov-ernment to target food and fuel subsi-dies for � scal consolidation, and take steps to deal with food in� ation. “The quality of � scal consolidation worries us,” Samiran Chakraborty, senior econ-omist, Standard Chartered Bank, said in a research note on Wednesday.

It expects gross borrowing for next � scal year at 5.8 to 6tn rupees, assum-ing 12% nominal GDP growth. l

THE DOG AND THE TECHNOLOGY

'The government is expected to cut budgeted expenditure by 550-650bn rupees in sectors like roads, metro rail, defense and power sectors to meet the de� cit target'